


Fall

by crossingwinter



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: (and arya's the vet), (gendry is a social worker in this which explains some of these tags in advance), (he also owns a million cats), (that's the mechanics you don't get from the summary), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Pairing: Jon x Ygritte, adventures in depression, mentions of child abuse, mentions of domestic abuse, mentions of non canon incest, mentions of past drug/alcohol abuse, vetfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-01
Updated: 2016-01-21
Packaged: 2018-05-04 09:14:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 57,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5328746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The scariest part of being alone is that someone may come into your life, but they may not stay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Veridissima](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Veridissima/gifts).



> For Joana, who reminded me of feelings regarding a [drabble](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2260959/chapters/10704212) I wrote. The drabble is, unfortunately, not a sequel (can’t quite work), but it was the jumping off point for this.
> 
> * * *
> 
> Ages: I imagine Arya’s somewhere around 27 or 28; Gendry is, accordingly, in his early 30s
> 
> * * *
> 
> Re: the incest tag: there are mentions of non-canon-compliant past incest in this fic. It will play a role, but never be “on screen.”

Gendry first noticed her when Leaves was sick. 

He’d found Leaves when she was already old, and when he’d brought her in to get checked, she’d been spayed already—a runaway.  He had papered the town with pictures of her, wondering if some little kid had lost a friend, but he’d never gotten a phone call back, and Leaves had taken to sleeping on his head and walking all over him at six in the morning because Leaves liked being fed at precisely the right hour.  Watty, sensing an ally, let her do it because to bestir himself needlessly was quite the trial. Gendry hadn’t minded too much.  He hated alarm clocks, hated the incessant beeping, and much preferred a cat walking over him, as annoying as it was, especially when she found his bladder.  It made him feel as though he was good for something, which, right when he woke up and was without caffeine, was a necessary feeling to get the day started with.

Leaves wasn’t his first cat—definitely not—nor was she the first cat he brought to the Red Fork Emergency Veterinary Clinic at three in the morning. (Lem had that honor.) But Leaves’ breathing had been restricted and since she’d been on his head, he’d noticed it.  She’d been too exhausted to fight when he’d put her in her carrier and hadn’t had the air to yowl her way to the vet and when he brought the carrier to the counter, Daena behind the desk took one look at the poor animal and got him set up in a room while he waited for the next vet to be ready.

Gendry sat down in pleather-lined chair, opened the carrier and put Leaves on his lap, petting her and making hushing sounds while she labored to breathe. “It’ll be ok,” he whispered to her, though it was really more for himself.  She couldn’t understand.  If she even knew the name he’d given her for the splotchy patterns on her back, she certainly never acknowledged it.  “It’ll be ok.”

The door swung open and a tired looking woman in her late-twenties stepped in.  She had dark hair, a long face, and black circles under her grey eyes. He wondered how many night shifts she worked.  “What’ve we got here?” she asked, kneeling down in front of him and looking at Leaves. She extended her fingers slowly and Leaves sniffed at them, still wheezing.  “Yeah, I know,” she said.  “I know. It’ll be ok, there little friend.”

She looked up at Gendry and said, “Would you mind putting her on the—”

“Yes, of course,” he said and lifted Leaves up carefully, standing up himself and setting her down on the chrome table.  In past visits, Leaves would have scrambled to get down, found some corner to hide in, but she just collapsed on the table, and kept breathing heavily.

“All right there,” the vet said, running her hands soothingly along Leaves’ fur.  “All right.  You are a lovely one, aren’t you?”  With one hand, she put her stethoscope in her ears, and then pressed it to Leaves’ chest, her hand holding the cat firmly.  Gendry hardly dared to breathe, in case it would disturb her, but he knew that was stupid.

“How old is she?” asked the vet.

“I don’t know, precisely. I found her about three years back, and she was an adult then.  Doctor Miller seemed to think she was probably about eight then, so…”

“Oh, you’re getting on there, aren’t you, old girl?” the vet said again.  “Well, I’m not hearing fluid in her lungs, so that’s a start.” She tugged off her stethoscope and grabbed Leaves’ jaw firmly, forcing the jaw open, looking closely at Leaves’ teeth.  “Yeah, I’m going to need to keep her for a little while.  We’ll need to get bloodwork done, and I want her in the clinic while she’s breathing like this.  We’ll put her on oxygen.”

“Do you know what it is?” Gendry asked quickly.

The vet shook her head. “Not just yet, but I have a few guesses and it’s probably some sort of heart problem.  Might have Doctor Rivers do an X-Ray EKG when he comes in tomorrow.”  She looked down at Leaves and ran her hands along Leaves’ face.  “There’s a good girl.  We’ll get you fixed up, I promise.”  She turned back to Gendry.  “I’m not a regular here, so I don’t know for sure what they’ll end up doing, but they’ll definitely make sure that she gets taken care of.”

Gendry smiled at her. “I thought you might be new,” he said, and she cocked her head, looking confused, and he hastened to explain. “I’ve got a few cats.” That was an understatement and Gendry knew it, but he didn’t feel the exact number was relevant at the moment. “So I’m in and out. Lem eats _anything_.”

The vet smiled. It was a warm smile, but it didn’t quite expel the tiredness from her eyes.  “You should see some of the puppies that come in,” she says. “The little nuggets’ll eat whatever is on the ground, even if it’s definitely not edible.”

“I’ve heard that about puppies.  I’d hoped it wouldn’t be true of adult cats who should really know better.” 

The vet laughed. “They do what they want. The true master species.” She looked down at Leaves again and her expression lost some of its lightness.  “Anyway,” she said, “I’ll get her in order, and Daena at the reception will get your paperwork sorted out.”

“Thanks,” Gendry said, extending his hand.  “Gendry Smith, by the way.”

She took his hand and looked at him, and her eyes were such a lovely shade of grey. He’d never seen eyes like that before. “Arya Stark,” she said. And that was the beginning.

* * *

The next time he saw her it was Lem’ fault.  Lem, per usual, decided it would be a good idea to eat a plastic bag, and Gendry was up late finishing paperwork on Garse Ringer and he had learned long ago to recognize the plaintive noises Lem made when he ate something that really wasn’t meant for feline consumption.

“Oh you idiot,” Gendry muttered to himself, hoisting the yellow cat off the ground and putting him in his basket and driving thirty minutes to the clinic.

“Lem this time,” he told Daena, who rolled her eyes.

“You know, you could probably do it yourself at this point,” Daena said.  “Hell, I bet they’d hire you for the late night shift if you wanted.”

“I’ve got a job,” Gendry said, looking down at Lem.  “Unfortunately,” he muttered to the cat.  He refused to look at his watch.  He refused to check the time.  He didn’t want to think about how he was going to the Woolsey’s house tomorrow at seven to drive Aemma to school and make sure she actually got there this time.  He’d need a vat of coffee in order to not bite the poor girl’s head off.  And he was supposed to be some modicum of stability right now.  Lord of Light protect him.

“Go on in. Doctor Stark will be with you soon,” Daena said, pointing to one of the visiting rooms and Gendry went in and let Lem out of his cage.  Lem sat on the ground, made to cough up a hairball, but couldn’t get his stomach to retch.

“You moron,” Gendry muttered under his breath again.

Doctor Stark looked just as tired this time as she had last time, even though it was marginally earlier in the evening.  “I see you’ve been eating things you shouldn’t have been,” she said to Lem, picking him up and placing him on the table.  She cast Gendry a glance out of the side of her eye, and Gendry wondered if she recognized him.  “Plastic bag?” she asked him.

“Probably. I hide them, but he manages.”

“Clever idiot,” she said fondly.  Then she picked Lem up again. “I’ll be back in a moment,” she said, and disappeared.  Gendry checked his phone.  Damn, it was one thirty. He really would have been better living in ignorance for a little while longer.

She came back some minutes later, Lem still on her shoulder.  “Well, it’s definitely in there.  I don’t think it’ll jam his intestines, which is what I’m most worried about. But I couldn’t get him to retch it up, and the X-ray says that it’s already beginning to pass through his system. Keep an eye on his stool. If there’s blood—”

“Bring him back.”

She smiled and handed Lem back to Gendry.  Her eyes flickered for a moment.  “How’s Leaves?” she asked him, and he smiled.

“Doing better. Thanks.”

She nodded. “Good, I’m glad to hear it. She was a sweet thing. I take it this is the one who eats everything?”

“How could you tell?” Gendry asked dryly and a wry smile crossed her face.

“He’s got that look to him.”  She scratched Lem behind the ears and gave Gendry one last tired smile, and then left the room.

* * *

He was thinking about calling this one Swampy.  She was covered in mud and, more disturbingly, blood, shuddering away in the blanket he’d swaddled her in after Mudge had found her along the river.  She was tiny, too.  Just a kitten.  If it weren’t for the blood, he’d have waited until tomorrow to bring her in.

Instead, he found himself cuddling her in the cool, fluorescent light of the clinic. She was mewling loudly, clearly terrified of just how much bigger he was than she, and clearly unused to people, but he did his best to pet her and calm her down.

“Well you look like some sort of ad from a dating website.  ‘Will take kittens to the vet in the dead of night.’  Or should I be worried?  What did you do to this one?” Doctor Stark teased when she came in. Those black circles under her eyes were still there.

“I didn’t do anything to her.  Mudge found her.”

“Is Mudge your roommate?”

“Another cat.” She looked at him the way everyone looked at him when they were exposed to at least three of his cats. But she did not ask how many. She would, he was sure. But not just yet. “He found her by the river. I live along the river,” he added. “I’d have waited until tomorrow, but she’s bleeding.”  He unswaddled Swampy—he didn’t know if he could in good conscience call her Swampy. It sounded wrong. Maybe Swampy something. Swampy…Meg.  Lord he was tired.  Why would he name a cat Swampy Meg?  But she was going to be named Swampy Meg, now, he knew it. He could never change a name, once he’d settled on one.

Doctor Stark pried the kitten from his hands and it began mewling even more loudly, clearly discontented at the concept of not being firmly supported.  She set it on the table and glanced at Gendry. “Can you pass me one of those paper towels there?” She jerked her head towards the sink.

“Wet, or—”

“Yes please.” He handed her the paper towel, and she began dabbing away at the kitten’s lower abdomen.  “Did you get into a fight, little thing?  You’re brave and tiny.”  She smiled a small smile, as if at some private joke, and it was the first time that the smile didn’t seem to be a happy smile.  It made him pause.  Her hair was in a tight pony-tail, but it was a messy one, and her scrubs were wrinkled. She was pale, and clearly not wearing makeup, lips chapped, and those dark circles… It really could just be that it was late.  She only seemed to work night shifts.  But all the same…

He looked down at her hands as she dabbed away mud and blood from Swampy Meg.  Her fingers were long, and she wore a glistening diamond engagement ring on her left hand.  Maybe there was trouble with her fiancé.  _No.  Stop it.  You’re not on the clock, and it’s none of your business._ Only Jeyne and Willow got his attention off the clock like this. He _would_ have a work-life balance if it killed him.

Doctor Stark inhaled sharply.  “Ooh baby, you’re lucky that missed your intestines,” she said and picked up the kitten again. “Stitches and bloodwork, and a rabies shot, I think.”

And she disappeared. A few minutes later, she came back and handed Swampy Meg back to Gendry.  “I’m surprised you don’t have your own parking spot, given how many times you make it in here,” she teased again, and the smile seemed normal again. Whatever it was that she’d thought of that made her smile sad had been put from her mind, and so Gendry did his best to put it from his as well.

“Well, I hear that if I bring in one more cat…”

Doctor Stark rolled her eyes.  “You’ll beat me to it, won’t you?  I get general staff parking because I’m a volunteer.”

“You’re a volunteer?” Gendry asked.

“Yeah. I like the work.” She scratched Meg’s ears again. “What’s this one named?”

“Well, in my exhaustion, she might have been dubbed Swampy Meg.”

Doctor Stark nodded, approvingly.  “I like distinctive names.  Though I will say, there’s nothing quite like meeting a roly-poly pug named Harrold.”

Gendry snorted. “I’d never name a cat Harrold. Harrold isn’t a cat name.”

* * *

“Lem again?” Daena asked when Gendry came in.

“Thoros this time,” he grumbled.  “Thoros, you’d think, would know better.  But it seems he doesn’t.”

Daena chuckled and pointed him into the room. 

“Ok, how many cats do you own?” Doctor Stark asked when he handed the reddish brown cat to her.

“Currently?”

“Yes,” Doctor Stark said as she began feeling Thoros’ stomach. 

“It’s twelve at the moment, thanks to Swampy Meg.”

Doctor Stark stared at him with wide grey eyes.  “Twelve.”

“Twelve.”

“You own twelve cats.”

“I do.” Ordinarily, he’d get defensive, especially when he was this tired, but from Doctor Stark it didn’t seem like a judgement, somehow.  If anything, he was biting back a smile.

“I’d heard of crazy old cat ladies, and have worked with several, but you’re the first young crazy cat man that I’ve ever met.”

“I just take in the strays,” he said, shrugging and trying not to laugh, surprised at his own good humor.

She gave him a look that changed after a second.  It started off disbelieving, and then grew soft.  “That’s good of you,” she said.  “Most people won’t take in strays at all. Especially if they’re adults. Adult cats never get taken in, somehow.”

“Nah,” Gendry said. “They can be trouble, but they just want a nice home like everyone else.  Not too different from people that way.”

Doctor Stark nodded. “No, they’re not. Animals are surprisingly people-like sometimes.”

“You got any pets?” he asked her.

“Yeah,” she said. “I’ve got a dog.”

“What sort?” he asked.

“Mastiff,” she said, and she dug out her phone, and showed him pictures of a gigantic dog that could probably have been mistaken for a bear with thick grey fur. Doctor Stark smiled at the screen for a moment.

“How long’ve you had her?”

Doctor Stark let out a long breath.  “Too long. She’s really old. Oldest mastiff I know, really.” She sounded a bit sad, and Gendry was seized with the urge to pat her back.  Pets getting old was hard.  You knew it was only a matter of time. 

“You have a good way with cats, given that you’re a dog owner,” Gendry commented. “Most dog people I know try and convince me dogs are superior to cats.”

Doctor Stark shook her head. “They’re good things, cats. Weird.  But good, for what they are.  And cute.  When they aren’t eating plastic.”  She gave Thoros a look, and picked him up.  “Let’s see what we can do for this fellow.” 

* * *

Gendry checked his phone quickly for new emails while he was waiting for his coffee to be ready, and saw that one had come from Jeyne between when he’d gotten into the car and when he’d pulled into Sharna’s for his usual morning caffeine.

_Willow’s all settled, and I think this boss will not be a complete moron.  Sad you couldn’t come help her move.  I’ll try and make her give you a call later, but you know how she is.  Things ok?  I miss you already.  You should come visit sometime soon, once I’ve gotten the Inn all settled._   _(I hate contractors. They should all be thrown in jail.)_

Gendry smiled at the screen and fired off a quick response. 

Gendry probably had more half-siblings than he even knew about, but none of them were as close to blood as Jeyne and Willow Heddle.  Maybe because his half-siblings never shared his roof, and Willow Heddle had been thrown into the same foster home as him when he’d been sixteen and Jeyne, a few years older, hadn’t been too far away from her younger sister. Now, Jeyne was putting the final touches on an inn that she’d been working so hard to get in order for the past few years, and Willow was down in Maidenpool, where she’d just, apparently, started a new job and moved into a new apartment and was hoping, at last, to finish her university degree.  Jeyne had only just left town, and Gendry did his best to distract himself from evenings that were suddenly empty because she was gone.  She used to live in his second bedroom, and though technically she wasn’t far, rush-hour traffic managed to get in the way of the frequent visits they’d promised one another. But this was good, all the same. Amazing, even, that she was doing all this on her own.  They’d all come such a long way, Gendry thought as he accepted his second coffee of the day from the barista.

Coffee in hand, Gendry went back to his car, took a sip while scrolling down the screen again—past bills from Lem’s goddamn clinic visits, promotional emails from whatever stores he’d been an idiot enough to give his email to, notifications that he’d had four new “likes” on his online dating profile that he didn’t even bother opening—until he found the one email he was looking for.  He opened it, and read it again to take his mind away from Jeyne and prepare himself for what was next on his agenda.

_u sed i shud let u no if i am nervus bout mum. she is weerd agen._

The sender was Minella Woolsey, and he hoped that Aemma had had the sense to delete the email out of her mother’s outbox after sending it to him.  He sighed and stuck his coffee in his cupholder and pulled out of the parking lot and onto the main road.  Five minutes later, he was getting out of the car—a huge black thing that he’d had for years and whose battery constantly pooped out—in front of the Woolsey’s house.

He tucked his phone into his back pocket, grabbed his coffee, and went up the walkway to knock on the door. 

There was no response, and he waited, checking his watch.  It was eight thirty, and Minella’s car was in the driveway.  So she hadn’t gone in to work today.  But had she put Aemma on the school bus?

He knocked again, and a moment later the door creaked open about two inches before the chain snapped and kept it from opening any further, and Gendry saw Aemma’s face peering through the door.

“She asleep?” Gendry asked, crouching down in front of her. 

Aemma nodded.

“What time did she get back last night?” he asked.

“Late. I was supposed to be sleeping, but I weren’t.  I don’t like being home alone.”

“I bet,” Gendry said. She wasn’t supposed to be home alone. He cursed Minella under his breath—it was like she wasn’t even trying.  She probably wasn’t.  She probably didn’t care. He wondered if his own mother had been like that.  He couldn’t remember. He only remembered moments of sadness and loneliness, and longer stretches from when he’d been older and had turned into a horrible human being.  “Have you had breakfast yet?”  Aemma shook her head.  Gendry grimaced. This wasn’t good. This really wasn’t good. “Can you fetch a chair and undo the chain?  I’ll make you something and wake up your mum.”

Aemma nodded and disappeared from the door.  A moment later, he heard the sound of plastic dragging against wood, and the door closed. He heard the scrabble of metal, then the more plastic dragging against wood, the scamper of feet and the door opened all the way and Aemma was standing there, looking dirty and forlorn.

“All right,” Gendry said, getting to his feet.  “What do you want—eggs?”  He hoped that Minella had eggs at least.  The number of times he’d only found moldy cheese in a case’s fridge…

Aemma nodded, and he went to the fridge, glad to find them.  He selected one, found a pan—thankfully clean—and sprayed it with the cooking spray he found on the counter.  A few minutes later, Aemma was pouring salt onto the egg and eating it while Gendry went and knocked on Minella’s door.  It opened under his hand, not closed all the way.

Minella Woolsey opened a bleary eye and glanced at him.  “Shit.”

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s a Tuesday. Why isn’t Aemma at school?”

“Shit buggering fuck.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“You’re going to bloody take her away from me aren’t you?” Minella said.  She sounded more angry than distraught.  “My own bleeding daughter and you’re going to take her away ‘n give her to some arsehole who don’t know her, and don’t love her.”

“You’re going to have to do a job to me proving that you love her, Minella,” Gendry said icily. He gave her a hard look. “I’m going to be back at two o’clock. Have a suitcase packed for her.”

“No!” Minella yelled at him, but Gendry didn’t care.  He closed the door to her bedroom and went back into the kitchen.  Aemma was sitting on her stool, no longer looking content at all.

“I’m going?” she asked him.

“’Fraid so,” Gendry said. He picked up her plate and brought it to the sink, running some water over it.

“I didn’t mean to get mum in trouble,” Aemma said quickly.

“You didn’t. She got herself in trouble,” Gendry said.  He sighed. “Grab your backpack. I’ll drive you over to school.”

Aemma looked at him hesitantly.  “Where am I going after school?”

Gendry put on the warmest voice he could find, which, at this hour of the morning and with this little caffeine yet in his body, was hard to find.  “Somewhere where you won’t have to worry when you’re next going to eat,” he said.  Aemma looked down at her hands, and began to cry.

* * *

When Gendry got home that night, he fed the cats, found an ice pack, stuck it on his shoulder, and flopped down on the couch and turned on his television.  The Chargers were playing the Ravens tonight, and there was nothing like a good football game to make him forget the ills of the day, especially when he’d had to relocate a six year old from her mother’s house and that mother had also tried hitting him with a frying pan when he’d come to get the girl’s bag so he could take her straight to foster care.  Well, nothing like a football game and Melly, who was always the first one to climb on his lap and begin purring.  He scratched the spot just at the base of her tail that always made her flop over on her side so he could pet her belly, then sighed and tried to focus on the game.

He found he wasn’t able to, though.  Not least because Swampy Meg and Watty were hissing at each other because Watty was trying to eat Swampy Meg’s food and, Swampy Meg being quite the feisty little kitten, was having none of it.  “Oy,” Gendry called at them, knowing full well they’d pay him no attention, “Cut that out. It’s been a day.”

To his surprise, both cats looked his way, then Watty went off to the bedroom that Jeyne had used to live in—whose queen-sized bed he had claimed long before Jeyne had departed—and Swampy Meg went off to do whatever it was that Swampy Meg wanted to do.

Melly looked up at Gendry, as if to remind him that she was on his lap and that she was warm, and soft, and very much still wanted him to pet her, and Gendry glanced down at her, before letting his hand settle on her stomach and he began to trace circles in her fur.

A few minutes later, Leaves came up and settled down next to him, and shortly thereafter, Thoros sat on one of his feet.  Their purring and the white noise of the game—Raventree was winning by a fairly large margin at this point—soothed his mind and reminded him that, whatever anger that Minella felt about him taking Aemma away had nothing to do with him, and that there was a very good reason he himself didn’t remember being that young.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Arya always drove the speed limit.  She hadn’t once. But now she did. Always, every time, and five under in rain, ten under in snow, and fifteen under in fog or ice, the way some remnant of her driver’s ed class had taught her when she was sixteen years old and eager to get behind the wheel of a car.  She drove carefully, defensively, slowly, even if she knew that it frustrated those who were behind her on the two-lane highway that was county road four nineteen, which brought her from the reservation towards Ruby Ford.  It was rush hour—late rush-hour.  Near six o’clock.  And there were many people on the road, and the road was empty in front of her as people high-tailed it home, but Arya did not move faster to make up the time. She kept going a solid fifty miles an hour, and would until she pulled off of four nineteen and on to Wildwood Road and that sharp bend and then the house.

She had the radio on, but wasn’t really listening to it.  There was some debate about the powers in the House of Lords again, and she paid attention only lightly, wondering if she’d hear Robb’s name. But she didn’t. As far as she knew, Robb was back in Winterfell, absenting himself from this particular kerfuffle. The pundit was raging about vestiges of an outdated system, and how the public shouldn’t even have to pay for the upkeep of the old castles, and Arya decided to switch channels to a pop station.

She hummed tunelessly to herself as she slowed down to take her right onto Wildwood Road, looking into her rearview mirror to see how traffic sped up now that she was not blocking it, before turning her attention to the road again.  She took the curve by number sixty five nice and slowly, then drove another two miles until she reached the white house with a porch and the overgrown garden she never had the energy to tend to. 

Nymeria was sitting by the door when she got in, and Arya bent down to press her face in her dog’s fur. Nymeria whimpered. She did not like Arya smelling like wolves, though she was used to it by now.  Arya rubbed Nymeria’s head, and let her out into the yard, then went into the bathroom just off the kitchen on the ground floor, throwing her clothes into her hamper. It was Warriorsday, and she wasn’t going into the clinic tonight.  Maybe she’d do laundry.  It was probably time. She was nearly out of underwear. She stood under the warm water of the shower for several minutes, letting the steam surround her before she reached and found her soap and washed away the wolves’ scent. Then she shut the water off, found a set of scrubs—comfortable to wear to bed, even if she wasn’t going into the clinic—fried an egg for herself because she knew she should eat even if she wasn’t hungry, downing a beer with it.  She brought Nymeria back inside, brushed off dirt and dried leaves from her fur, fed her, then curled up next to her on the dog bed in the living room, wrapping a blanket around herself and breathing in the dog scent that was the only thing that lulled her to sleep.

* * *

 

“Bethany’s flirting,” Arya told Sandor when she came in from the woods.  Her jeans were damp because it had rained some, and her hair was coming out of her ponytail in straggles.  It was a strange term for it, but that was the one Sandor used.

“Really flirting?”

“Yes,” Arya says. They’d been hoping that Bethany would get pregnant.  The pack needed pups, and Bethany was old enough now to carry them.  But she’d seemed uninterested in any of the male wolves in the pack.

“Who?” Sandor grunted.

“Sam,” Arya said, evenly.  She settled down behind her desk and began to write up her report for that week—pack movement, diet, health and Bethany’s flirtations.

“You going out again this afternoon?” Sandor grunted at her as she typed.

“Yeah, probably,” she replied.  She always went out in the afternoon.  She liked going out as much as she could.  It helped the pack conceive of her as not being a threat, which was always a good thing when one worked with wolves.  “Why?”

“There’s some seminar that I’m supposed to go to, but I can’t be buggered and wanted to know if you would go?”

“Hmm…frolicking with wolves or staying inside and listen to someone talk about policy again,” Arya muttered. 

Sandor snorted. “Better you than me,” he said.

“I’ll leave it to you this time, boss,” she said, pulling her best cheeky voice.

Sandor muttered something that sounded like a litany of curses under his breath, then got to his feet and went to their minifridge, digging out his sandwich and eating it.

“You’re eating early,” Arya commented.

“If I’m going to a fucking seminar this afternoon, then they’ll fucking feed me, so I might as well want to eat their food.”  


“Fair enough. Better you’re going than me, then. I doubt I’ll be hungry.” It had been a long time since Arya had really felt hungry.  Sometimes she got hints of it when she did eat, that feeling of your stomach happily digesting something when it’s been empty for so long, but the desire to eat food…she considered it a huge step that she could bring herself to cook.

Sandor was looking at her, and she turned back to her computer, hooking her phone into the USB cord that was plugged into the terminal so that she could get pictures off of it to include in her report.  As the pictures loaded, she stretched her arms over her head and fixed her ponytail.

She looked fondly at the photographs.  The pack had grown since she’d come to the riverlands.  Bethany wasn’t the first wolf who would have pups, not by any means, but she had only been a pup herself when Arya had first gotten here, and there was something gratifying about seeing one of her pups getting ready to have her own. It was something she’d felt sad about when spaying Nymeria when they’d gotten her—Nymeria would never have baby Nymerias. Sansa would have thought that a good thing, but now, as Nymeria was getting to be so old that Arya felt as though she was just waiting for her dog to die…she wished she had Nymeria puppies, who would romp around and keep her warm and be something to come home to as well. Though she imagined that any offspring of Nymeria’s would be more energetic in its protestations that she worked with wolves every day.

After lunch, she got to her feet again, heading outside without saying a word to Sandor. She doubted she’d see him again today—those seminars always ran over and he’d probably get held up by one of the groundskeepers again afterwards.  No wonder he wanted her to go instead of him.  But she’d see him tomorrow, and it had been a long time since they’d done the superficial “what are you doing tonight?” and the “I’ll see you tomorrow—have a good evening” that peppered her experience volunteering at the clinic. She liked it better this way. She didn’t have to think of excuses, or lies, or anything.  She could just keep on doing, and Sandor could keep on doing what he was doing and who cared if both of them ached?

Arya keyed into her ATV, put on her helmet and rode out into the woods.  She liked the woods.  It wasn’t too bright in the woods, like it was always too bright everywhere else in late summer.  It made her eyes sting because she didn’t like flinching and she _should_ be able to be out in the sunlight without feeling as though it was too bright, but it was too bright and she couldn’t get used to it. The woods were nice, though, trees blocking out light the way that curtains did in a window.

She drove along the pathway, feeling a breeze against her skin, and looking for signs of the pack. They would hear her coming, know that she was back and they’d wait for her.  The pack had started waiting for her, and she liked that. It was nice to have someone waiting for her, even if, like Nymeria, the pack wasn’t him.

* * *

The only good thing about weekends was that Arya had the time to take Nymeria for a good long walk. It wasn’t always easy for Nymeria to get around—her poor pup was far older than she should be. It was as though she couldn’t bear to go and die on Arya the way everyone else had.  On Cronesdays, Arya would take Nymeria down to the park in the center of town.  They would walk around it once, then Nymeria would get tired and would find a tree to sleep under, and Arya would sit with her, sometimes reading, sometimes just staring off into the distance.  When Nymeria woke again, she would help lug the old girl to her feet and they would walk back to Arya’s car, pausing only if Nymeria deigned to be sociable with the other dogs. She’d bring Nymeria home and feed her and then find some sleeping pills that would knock her into Strangersday.

She knew she shouldn’t think about it as her final days with Nymeria.  She knew she should just think about it as her spending time with her good, loyal, old girl.  But she lived in fear of the day she came home from the reservation, or from the clinic, or hell, a Cronesday in the park when Nymeria wouldn’t wake. _“You should think about putting her to sleep,”_ Mycah had suggested once, nervously, knowing that it was sacrilege to suggest to a dog owner that their too-old mastiff might have lived past her glory years, and might be better off passing.  _I’d have thought about it, if you hadn’t gone_ , Arya thought vehemently whenever she remembered this, then pinched herself hard because she couldn’t be angry at Mycah that way.

She was leaning against Nymeria under a tree while the big pup snored, her eyes drifting through the park. She’d come here with Mycah once. They’d held hands and he’d tried not to get too excited that the jungle gym had just been rebuilt ( _“So much nicer than anything I had growing up” “Bran used to climb the walls of Winterfell.”_ ) and she’d known he was thinking about bringing their kids there on the sly, and that he’d never say it, because they had only just gotten engaged, they were young, there was no need to think about children just yet.  But she’d known, and it had warmed her as much as his hand in hers.

She closed her eyes, preserving the memory for just a moment, letting the sweetness of it wash over her before she hit the wall.

When she did, she opened her eyes, blinking back tears, and looking away from the jungle gym, trying to find something in this park that didn’t remind her as powerfully of Mycah.

Her eyes settled on a park bench, about twenty feet away from her.  To her surprise, she recognized the person sitting on it. It was Gendry Smith, the man of a million cats who had a nice smile and big hands and the build of someone who probably worked out more than Arya realized was even possible. He was sitting next to a little girl, probably no more than five or six, who was eating an ice cream on a stick. _Does he collect tiny children as well as cats?_ Arya thought.

The girl didn’t look like him at all.  Maybe she was a girlfriend’s kid.  Or a niece. Gendry was watching her closely, his expression very serious as the girl chomped away on her ice cream. He looked far more serious than Arya had ever seen him, and she looked more closely at the girl. The girl looked sad, and Arya felt her heart twist because she knew that expression all too well, of struggling to put to words to something that hurts you, but even the words hurt.

Nymeria stirred next to her, and Arya got to her feet, suddenly thinking. 

She didn’t know the girl. Hells, she didn’t even really know Gendry.  But the little girl was sad, and Arya was sad, and Nymeria might let the girl ride on her back for a little while the way she had with the twins that Arya had babysat in college. She would at least let the girl pet her, and there was really nothing like a giant, fluffy dog to put a smile on Arya’s face. 

So when she helped Nymeria to her feet, she led her not towards the car, but towards the park bench.

“Hi,” she said to Gendry, and it felt so strange.  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d just walked up to someone and said hi. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d wanted to talk to anyone.  It felt like a lifetime ago, another Arya, who shared her face but not her memories.

Gendry looked up at her, surprised.  He smiled when he recognized her.  He had a nice smile. “Oh.  Hello.”  His eyes drifted over to Nymeria.  “This your dog?”

“Yep,” Arya said. She looked over at the girl. “Who’s this?”

“Aemma,” Gendry said easily.  “Aemma, this is Arya. She’s a vet.”

The girl’s eyes went wide. “You take care of animals?” the girl breathed.

“On the side,” Arya said. She felt like she was acting in a play, like she was pretending to be everything she had once been. It was oddly relaxing—that she hadn’t forgotten how to do this.  “I take care of wolves.”

“Wolves?” Gendry asked.

“Over at the Riverside Reservation.  There’s been a pack living in the woods now for a few years and I monitor them.”

“Wow,” Aemma said, sounding thoroughly awed.  Then she looked at Nymeria and leaned away slightly.  “Is she a wolf?”

Arya smiled. “Nope.  She’s a dog.  A very big dog. Bigger than some of my wolves, actually. Do you want to pet her?”

The girl looked back at Nymeria, and looked a little less scared.  “She won’t bite?”

“Nope. Hold out your hand so she can get your scent.  Once she has it, she’ll be sweet as a lamb.”  _So long as you don’t try to hurt me_ , Arya didn’t add.

Aemma extended a hand and Nymeria sniffed it, then began to lick it and Aemma giggled. She scooted forward on the bench and began rubbing her hand in Nymeria’s thick fur, and Arya chanced a glance at Gendry.  He was leaning back against the bench now, looking pleased, and smiling at her and perhaps in another lifetime, Arya would have grinned at him, but instead she felt panic gripping her heart.  _What if he thinks this is what I am? What if he thinks we could be friends, and then sees_ _…_

She looked back at Nymeria, who was now sitting and wagging her tail against the pavement of the walkway. This was a bad idea. And she couldn’t think how to get away, not while Nymeria was clearly pleased to have made a new friend, and there was a smiling child involved.  She closed her eyes for a moment.  _Pretend.  Be like you were. Just this once. You can do it._

“How old are you, Aemma?” she asked.

“Six,” Aemma said.

“Have you ever ridden a dog before?” she asked.

Aemma looked at her with wide eyes.  “Can I?” she breathed, excitedly.

“Is that safe?” Gendry asked, not unkindly, leaning forward so that his elbows were resting on his knees and Arya caught a glimpse of dark hair on his chest.

“Yes,” Arya said. “She’s done it before. She’s a good old thing. Will you let Aemma ride you, Nymeria?”

Nymeria let out a gruff woof and Aemma slid off the bench and Arya picked her up and put her on Nymeria’s back.  Nymeria began to walk, wagging her tail as she did, and Arya and Gendry followed, standing close by in case something happened. 

“Thanks,” Gendry said quietly in her ear.  “It’s been a rough week for her.  This is helping a lot.”

Arya smiled at him. “It looked like that might be the case,” she said.  Part of her wanted to ask what had happened, but it wasn’t her business and if Gendry told her, then…

_Then what?  You’ll make a friend?_

She felt tears stinging in her eyes and she looked away, back at Nymeria and the giggling girl on her back.  _What wouldn’t I give to be able to be distracted that easily_ , Arya thought.  She wondered what it would be like to ride Nymeria.  She’d gotten her when she was too big for it, and for all Nymeria was a huge dog, she couldn’t bear the weight of a pre-teen.

“Glad to help,” Arya said, and her voice sounded mildly dead even to her own ears and she fought to keep from wincing.  She was glad to help, after all.  So why couldn’t she sound it? She hated feeling this way, being this way.  She missed being lighthearted and carefree and charming and sociable and everything she’d been when Mycah had still been alive.

* * *

Bran called her while she was making dinner on Maidensday and Arya summoned a smile as she answered the phone.  You sounded happy when you smiled as you talked, and maybe Bran would see through that, but it usually helped her get through conversations with him.

“How are things? I haven’t heard from you in a while,” he asked her as she was tipping her pasta onto her plate.

“Oh, the usual. Keeping myself busy,” she said. Her voice sounded so breathy in her ears. 

“You’re still volunteering at that clinic?” Bran asked.

“Yep. Three nights a week,” Arya said.

“Three? That’s…do you sleep?” Bran asked. He sounded concerned, serious. Arya forced a laugh.

“Sometimes,” she said. “Sleep is for the weak.”

“Sleep is good for the mind,” Bran said, and Arya was glad they weren’t video chatting on her computer because he’d see her flinch.  She didn’t know how to tell any of them that she couldn’t sleep without pills, and that she worked to exhaust herself on those nights at the clinic so that she could even motivate herself to take the pills to begin with.

“Yeah, I know,” Arya said. “I took a psychology class in college. And I know how brain chemistry works.”

“In animals,” Bran said dryly.

“Humans are animals,” Arya said.  “Some more than others.”

Bran snorted, and Arya knew she could make him talk about himself now without fear that he’d think she was deflecting.  “How are you? When does the semester start back up?”

Bran sighed. “Two weeks,” he said. It was his tenth semester at the University of Winterfell and he hoped his last.  It had taken him longer to get through college than he would have liked. The campus was spread out and it was physically hard for him to get to some of the classes he needed to take in his chair, and especially after their mother had died, he had felt a little adrift.  Robb had promised him that how _long_ it took him to get his degree didn’t matter so much as him completing it, and so he was taking fewer classes per semester than the average student was.  It worked well, Arya thought.  Though she could tell that Bran was ready to be done with school, ready for whatever came next—not that he knew what that was.

It was odd listening to him talk about his thesis project—research all done, just the writing remaining. She remembered how he’d been after mother had died, how glum he had always sounded, how sad, how he’d wondered if he’d ever be happy again.  And here he was, sounding so vibrant, so full of life, and yet Arya felt—well, not quite as low as when Mycah had died, but still low. 

She wondered if Bran knew. She wished she could tell him. She would, if she could, but she barely knew how and besides—telling him now…it would make her feel weak and, worse, it would make him feel terrible for not having noticed. It would make all of them terrible for not having noticed, for falling for her charade that she was moving on with her life when really life had completely stopped.  And if Bran was truly feeling better, truly sounding alive again, she couldn’t bring herself to ruin that by saying that she needed pills to sleep, and that the only time she felt even close to normal was when she was volunteering at the clinic and taking care of sick pets. 

For a moment, before she said goodbye, she thought of telling him, or of calling Jon and letting him know too.  But she could imagine the crushed look on Bran’s face—and couldn’t bring herself to imagine the one on Jon’s—and instead sighed.  _You can be stronger than this.  For them.  You can do this._

But she wasn’t even sure what “this” was, and that alone made her wonder if it were even possible to succeed.


	3. Chapter 3

Lem was vomiting up soap bubbles, and Thoros came and stood on Gendry’s bladder until he woke up and found the yellow wretch in the living room.

“Oh come on. Soap?” Gendry muttered, picking up the cat and putting him in his cage before going and finding a pair of pants and a decently nice shirt.  It was just beginning to get light outside, black turning to a weird purple as the sun began to round the earth, and Gendry suspected he wouldn’t quite have the time to get dressed and shower after he brought Lem home. Today was, thankfully, an office day. He had no meetings scheduled—only a phone call tonight when he got home to check in with Aemma and her foster parents.  So at least he didn’t have to make any sort of impression. 

He drove the familiar route to the clinic, periodically glancing in his rearview mirror to make sure that Lem was still alive in his carrier.  He didn’t need to look, he supposed.  He could hear the poor cat trying to vomit up the soap he appeared to have eaten.  _You’d think he’d have learned by now_ , Gendry thought bitterly.

He’d gotten to bed early the night before, too.  He’d been looking forward to a full night’s sleep as his thoughts had transitioned into dreams.  He had a lot of paperwork to do, and he might actually have the energy to get it done. But no.  No, Lem had had other plans.  And soap.

When Arya Stark came into the room, she took one look at Lem and her eyebrows shot up on her forehead.

“I don’t know,” Gendry moaned by way of explanation.  “I’m amazed he hasn’t snuffed it.  He’s a danger to himself.”

Arya’s lips twitched and she went and ran her fingers over Lem’s stomach.  To Gendry’s surprise, Lem didn’t attack her hands. He always attacked Gendry when he did that. Maybe he had come to associate her with fixing his stomach ills.  Bloody moronic cat.  “Most soaps aren’t toxic for cats,” she said. 

“He wouldn’t stop vomiting,” Gendry said quickly.  “And there were bubbles.”  If he hadn’t been so tired, he might have found it amusing.

“Oh, I’m glad you brought him in,” Arya said.  “Just to be sure. Honestly, this one seems like a menace and I’m amazed he’s still around, given what he eats.”

“The hilarious part is he’s not the overeater of the bunch.  That’s Watty.”

“Does Watty eat everyone’s food?” Arya asked. 

“Yes. And he cries for scraps of my meals,” Gendry sighed.  “Great big spoiled animal. Weighs about twenty pounds. Totally immense.”

Arya snorted. “Well, I suppose Lem’s had to look elsewhere for sustenance, if Watty’s eating all the food.”

Gendry glared at her in what he hoped was a good-natured way.  He was too tired to be sure though.  Jeyne always said that he shouldn’t glare good-naturedly at people when he was tired because he always just came off as aggressive.  A habit he’d undoubtedly acquired when he was a teenager and which he’d been unsuccessful at divesting himself of.  He hoped she wouldn’t take it personally.  Although maybe it would be better if she saw it—saw him. _I need coffee._ “I lock Watty away during feeding time, but I think he’s trained the rest of the little fools not to eat all of their dinners away so it’s a useless exercise.”

“The problem with owning a bunch of cats,” Arya said knowingly.  If she’d noticed the glare, she’d attributed to morning grump. Gendry wasn’t sure how he felt about that.  “Makes it hard to put one of them on a diet.”  She looked down at Lem again and shook her head.  “So they must make their own, I suppose.”

* * *

 

It was the first time that they’d left the clinic at the same time.  The sun was low in the sky, sending orange and yellow fingers through the blue.  He saw Arya make her way over to her car—the same one he’d seen when she’d found him and Aemma in the park—and he heard himself asking,

“Do you want to get coffee?”

She stiffened, and looked at him sharply, her eyes wary, her face drawn. 

“I meant literally. Not like a date. I know you’re engaged.” She looked down at her left hand, dark bangs falling into her eyes.  She brushed them away.  “It’s just really early and I don’t know if you have work immediately, but I need to refuel.  Or to regular fuel.  I haven't had any fuel yet.”

She was silent for a moment, still staring at her hand and Gendry couldn’t quite see her face. Was he imagining it, or did her face look more pale, the dark circles under her eyes more pronounced when she looked up at him? 

No. He wasn’t imagining it. And something was definitely wrong. He didn’t know what, and he didn’t know why he cared given that he barely knew her, but something was definitely wrong.  So even though she hadn’t replied, he pressed on.  “You can’t tell me you don’t drink coffee after an all-nighter like this.”

Arya sighed, and it turned into a yawn halfway through.  “I do. Just usually when I get home.”

“You don’t go to Sharna’s?” he asked her, surprised.  He felt like everyone and their mother went to Sharna’s.  Easily the best coffee within a ten-mile radius. He’d given Jeyne explicit instructions that if she didn’t have coffee better than Sharna’s in her inn, it would be an inferior establishment.

Arya was shaking her head, and Gendry said.  “Come to Sharna’s with me.  I go literally every day. You’ll never have a cup of coffee this good.”

And she relented. “Fine.  Yeah ok.  I’ll follow you, then.” 

Fifteen minutes later, they were sitting across from one another at Sharna’s, each with a huge mug of coffee set on the table in front of them.  Gendry watched Arya closely as she raised the cup to her lips, blew away the steam for a moment, and then sipped it.  Her eyes closed for a moment, and he saw her tongue dart out to lick away the coffee that was stuck to her upper lip.

“Gods that’s good,” she says, and when her eyes drift open there’s something almost dazed to her expression.  “I didn’t realize this was here.”

Gendry gave her a smile. “It’s super crowded during rush hour, but right now…”

“For after an all night shift, it’s perfect,” she breathed.  “Usually I head straight home and make coffee there before I take Nymeria out for a walk.”

“What sort of coffee do you usually get?” he asked.  Coffee was vital to him, and even after only a few sips he was feeling calmer. Coffee was the difference between what Willow called “Nice Guy Gendry” and “The Grouch Monster.” If only she knew that it wasn’t that simple.  But then again, if anyone did, it was probably Willow.  He should call he and make sure that she was settled in well.  He kept forgetting, what with making sure Aemma was well taken care of, as she was the most pressing of his cases at the moment.  _She’s your sister, remember? You’re supposed to look out for her._ But she always got so edgy when he called to check in on her.  She, more than Jeyne, didn’t like being reminded of needing it.

“I just make some instant coffee that I pick up at the store,” Arya said, but she sounded bitter at the very thought, “Though now that I think about it, I really should get this. This is…”

“Right?”

“Yeah.”

They sat there in silence for a few minutes, drinking their coffee.  Arya looked at her hands, at her coffee, out the window, anywhere but at Gendry, and Gendry checked his phone every now and then to see if he had any updates from anyone about anything. 

When they finished, Gendry took both mugs to the counter and ordered a second cup to go. Arya hovered behind him, unsure, it seemed, whether or not she wanted another one, or whether she wanted to go, or whether she wanted to stay.  When he turned around, he gave her a quick smile and she flinched.

“Sorry,” she muttered. “I—I know I’m not fun.”

Gendry’s smile faded into a frown and he took a sip of coffee from his to-go cup.

“What does that mean?” he asked gently.  _Careful now_ , he thought.  _If something is wrong…_ Something was definitely wrong.  He knew it.

“I just…I know I’m not talkative or…”

“You just got off an all night shift,” Gendry said.  “I’m not surprised you’re not running your mouth off.  Willow’s always chatty when she’s tired, but Jeyne gets stony silent.  Sometimes it’s just like that.”

Arya blinked at him. “Sisters?” she asked.

“Of a sort.” He thought of Bella. He always thought of Bella first, even if he hadn’t seen her as recently as he’d seen Mya.  And Mya was never a sister to him the same way Jeyne and Willow were. And certainly not the way Bella was.  “Foster sisters. Met them when I was about sixteen and they stuck.  More than any of the others.” 

Arya’s mouth opened in surprise.  That wasn’t new to him. Most people were surprised at how forthright he was about having been in foster care.  _Make them confront it. Make them confront me_ , he remembered thinking when he’d been sixteen, and angry, and wild like a rabid dog. _If sixteen year old me knew that in twice as many years, I’d be a boring old cat owner…_   That was a victory, even if it was also a lie.  A clever one that he almost believed himself sometimes.  He took a sip of coffee, and breathed slowly, focusing on the present and not the past because if he thought about being sixteen for another second he’d need another four cups of coffee.  This was why he had such trouble making friends.  This right here.  Because they always asked questions about the past and then he’d regress and remember that it was all just him pretending to be a boring old cat owner.

“That’s good. That you’re close to them,” she said. “That something good came out of it.”

Gendry nodded. “Better than any of the rest of it. Anyway—you’re not ‘not fun’. You’re tired.”

Arya looked down at her hands again, biting her lower lip between her teeth.  She didn’t say anything though.  She looked like she wanted to, but she didn’t. Instead she gave him a smile that once again didn’t reach those tired looking eyes and said.  “Anyway, thanks for coffee.  This is good.  I’ll come back.”

“I’m here every morning,” Gendry said.  “It’s really worth coming in.”

She nodded, and waved her hand jerkily in farewell before heading back out into the parking lot. Gendry watched her go, sipping her coffee, knowing he shouldn’t get involved but Lord of Light, he knew something was wrong and he couldn’t quite bring himself not to care.

* * *

On Smithsday, Gendry left work, went home briefly to feed the cats, then drove fifteen miles west to Jeyne’s inn—or rather, the framework of Jeyne’s inn.

“I hate contractors,” Jeyne announced the minute he stepped through the plastic sheets that hung in front of the front doorway.  “They are liars and frauds and I’m glad you got your life together enough that you never had to consider building things for a living.”

“Behind schedule?” Gendry asked, clapping Jeyne on the shoulder.  She rolled her eyes at him and then stepped into his arms, resting her head against his shoulder.  So she needed supportive Gendry today.  “It’ll be ok,” he told her, squeezing her tightly.  “It’ll be ok.”

“Yeah, but not soon enough. I want it to be over so we can get fucking on with it,” Jeyne said.  She sounded more angry than sad, though, which was a good thing.  Gendry was always wary of Jeyne’s sads.

When he’d first met Jeyne, she’d been silent.  Willow had been loud—still was, really—but Jeyne had been quiet and withdrawn. Even at sixteen, and completely selfish and wrapped up in his own problems, Gendry had understood that. It was hard to have your dad murdered. And they’d never caught the bugger who’d done it, either.  But Jeyne sad and quiet…well, he didn’t like thinking about what that led her to. She was past that now.

He thought of Arya Stark, sad and quiet and the way she’d said she wasn’t any fun as though it were some sort of condemnation of her character.  He couldn’t imagine a vet who worked at a wolf reserve could really be no fun, especially not after she’d handled Aemma so well when they were at the park that time…

“What’s up?” Jeyne asked him.

“Hm?”

“You’ve stopped trying to comfort me.”

“Self-centered little—” she elbowed him and he grinned.  “Nah, just thinking about…about someone I met is all.”  Could he call her a friend?  Not just yet.  Gendry tried not to use the word “friend” for people who weren’t his friends. It burned less in the long run. Both for them and for him.

“Someone you met? Like a girl?”  Jeyne looked excited.  Gendry had dated exactly two girls in the entire time he’d known Jeyne, neither for very long. She didn’t know about what had come before he’d met her, and he wanted it to stay that way.

“Don’t look at me that way. She’s a girl, but not _a girl_ , you know?”

“Oh come on, let me have my—”

“She’s engaged, Jeyne. It’s not like that.” He did his best to ignore the put-out expression on Jeyne’s face.  He did his best to ignore the way he felt put out even as he said the words himself. _Fuck you, you fucker_ , he thought viciously at himself. _You’re better than thinking that._ Or maybe he wasn’t.  He shook himself of that thought.  “I think something’s wrong, though.  She seems quite depressed and I don’t know her well enough to…and I’m trying not to pry, but I also just sort of sit there and wonder what’s wrong and _know_ that I could help fix it, you know?”  There.  That was better.

Jeyne patted his arm and gave him a stern look.  “She doesn’t need a social worker if she’s depressed, Gendry.”

“Yeah. Exactly.  I know that.  But…I don’t know.”  She always looked down at her hands.  At that ring on her finger, like something was wrong with her fiancé.  Maybe he was far away and she missed him, or maybe he was abusive, or something else that Gendry hadn’t considered.  “I keep running through these scenarios in my head where something’s wrong and I can help.  But even if something is wrong, it’s not my place to go in and fix it like some magical fairy.” Jeyne snorted, and he rolled his eyes, knowing that she was probably imagining him in a pink tutu flinging sparkling fairy dust at little children. 

“But,” Jeyne said slowly and Gendry looked down at her, “But, if she is depressed, and maybe lonely? She might need a friend. So yeah, start there. If you want to help. Which it sounds like you do.”

Gendry nodded slowly.

“You’re good at that,” Jeyne added giving him a quick hug.  “When you bother trying.”

Gendry rolled his eyes. “Ok, show me around this place, will you?”

Jeyne groaned. “Gods, there’s so much left to get done and I’m supposed to be booking guests already.”

* * *

Gendry called Willow on the drive back from Jeyne’s.  He didn’t really expect her to pick up.  Willow was exactly the age where she had never really learned how to use a telephone as it was meant to be used, and avoided phone calls like the plague, resorting to text messages and internet chat whenever she could. Gendry thought that phone calls were good for her, so he only ever called her, which was probably why he spoke to her less than he should. 

To his surprise, given that it was past ten on a Smithsday and she was the type to go out with friends, Willow picked up the phone.

“Hello?”

“I’m shocked.”

“Oh shut up. I do pick up the phone when you call.”

Gendry snorted. His cell phone was sitting on his lap as he drove down route ten, and he hoped that she could hear the snort even on speaker phone.  

“What’s going on?” he asked her.  “Shouldn’t you be out and about?  I know I’m a boring old man, but you’re young and hip and—”

“Oh shut up,” Willow said again.  “And for your information, I have work tomorrow morning and am trying to be a responsible employee, the way _you’ve_ always encouraged me to be.”

“Good girl,” Gendry grinned.  “What’s the gig?”

“Hm?”

“Where are you working that would be so inhumane as to have you in on a Cronesday morning?”

“Red Lion. I’m trying to make some extra money so I can go with some uni friends to the Summer Isles over the midwinter hols.”

“What? You don’t want to come and visit?” Gendry teased. 

“If this winter is anything like last winter, no.”  It had snowed in the riverlands last winter.  It never snowed in the riverlands.  But that was climate change for you, he supposed.  “Besides, whenever I stay with you I come out of it with cathair on everything, and I like your cats, Gendry, but do you know how annoying they are?”

“I promise you, I do,” Gendry said dryly, thinking of Lem and the soap he’d eaten earlier that week. “You could always stay at Jeyne’s inn.”

“Yeah, but she’ll need the rooms for the holidays when everyone goes home, yeah?  And I’m not paying for a room in my own sister’s inn. Fat bleeding chance.”

Willow had always had a mouth on her, and Gendry smiled to himself.  “How’s your coursework going?” he asked and Willow groaned.

“Look, I’m taking that management course that Jeyne told me to take, and I hate it. I don’t want to be a manager.”

“What do you want to be then?” Gendry asked.

“Oh quit that, I got enough of that from Beric, will you?”  Beric had been their social worker—the one who had put them in the same house. “You sound just like him sometimes,” she grumbled.

“Yeah, well, role models and the like,” Gendry sighed.  He hoped he didn’t sound _too_ much like Beric, but he supposed there were worse things.  “You didn’t answer the question.”

“I don’t want to,” Willow snapped.  “I get it enough from my advisor and from Jeyne and I know you like getting mixed up in everyone’s business—”

“I really don’t.”

“Well, you like getting mixed up in _my_ business—”

“Yeah, because I care about you, nitwit.”

“But I don’t want to think about it right now, ok?”  That, Gendry could understand.  He’d been near enough the same at one point or another. 

“Well, focus on the Summer Isles, then,” Gendry said.

“I will, thanks,” Willow replied.  He heard the sound of tapping and was sure she was on her laptop.  “I’m going to bed now, since I have to be up at balls o’clock.”

“I didn’t know you could set an alarm for balls o’clock.”

“ _You_ can’t.  It’s built in for you,” she teased and Gendry snorted. 

“Tell that to Leaves,” Gendry responded dryly.

“What? You mean the pussies—”

“Bye, Willow. Good talking to you.”

“Oh you can’t take a joke, can you?”

“I don’t particularly like it when people make pussy jokes about my cats, thanks. They’re delightful creatures—”

“Even Luke? Luke’s always seemed to be a great big twat to me.”

“And besides that’s not a way to talk about…you know…”

“Vaginas?”

Gendry rolled his eyes and could hear Willow hooting with laughter.  “You did turn into an old man at some point, didn’t you?”

“You will too, one day,” Gendry sighed.  “If it happened to me, it’ll happen to you.”

“You were never wild and crazy though,” Willow pointed out, and her voice got a little agitated. “You never went too hard.”

 _Oh you didn’t know me then,_ Gendry wanted to say, but he didn’t.  He didn’t need Willow to know about all that.  There were worse things than his sort-of-little-sister thinking of him as a boring old man who owned too many cats and didn’t get laid.  “Call me when you’re my age and we’ll have a chat about that,” Gendry said instead and Willow laughed. 

“You’ll be ninety by then.”

“Get off my lawn.”

He pulled off route ten and slowed the car down to the in-town speed limit of twenty-five miles an hour. 

“You good though?” he asked her.

“Yeah,” Willow said. “Better yeah.  Working on it.”

“You’ll call if you need help.”

“Obviously,” Willow said. He knew it was obvious too, but he liked saying it.  He liked hearing that he was needed, that he was relied upon.  In some ways maybe he hadn’t come so far after all.


	4. Chapter 4

Arya started going to Sharna’s on her way home from her all-night shifts, sitting quietly in by a window with a warm cup of coffee, watching as the road became more and more full of cars, feeling her breath go inside her body.  It was oddly calming in a way she hadn’t ever really expected. Just being in a place where other people came and went and she didn’t have to interact with them, she could just be around people…it was nice.  It was refreshing.  It was distracting. It was a lot of things.

And sometimes, when she was there, she saw Gendry.

He always gave her a smile, or a wave. If he came in later in the morning, around when Arya herself was getting to her feet and preparing to run home, shower, feed Nymeria and let her out into the yard, before heading off to the wolves, it was shorter—he looked harried later in the morning, and never said more than “hello.” But on days when he came anywhere between fifteen minutes and half an hour earlier, Arya found herself talking to him, almost without realizing it.

“Any idiot cats?” Gendry would ask.

“None as stupid as Lem,” Arya would respond.  “Did get a dog that got into it with a raccoon though, so I needed to give him a booster to his rabies vaccination.”

Or, there would be “Just off?”

“Yeah, boring night. Not much to do. Though I suppose that’s for the best.”

As late summer turned into autumn, he started wearing sports coats over his button downs, and his cheeks would be red from the wind as he crossed the parking lot into Sharna’s. His eyes would sparkle blue and Arya would try not to think of Mycah’s blue eyes—lighter than Gendry’s—or her mother’s.  Everyone always had blue eyes, and it only made her miss them more.

“You’re looking withdrawn this morning,” Gendry said.  He was standing over her, looking all alive and vivid colored and Arya couldn’t stop the words that came out of herself.

“I always look withdrawn.” She inhaled sharply, wishing she could suck the words right back into her mouth, but it was too late. She watched Gendry warily.

Gendry snorted. “Yeah, I guess. But it struck me today.”

“And it doesn’t usually?” She wasn’t sure she wanted the answer to that question.

“I guess,” he shrugged. “But never enough to remark upon it.” She wondered if he was lying. “Do you want to talk about it?”

_I can’t._

She looked down at her hands, at the way that that diamond on her left hand was sending light from the early morning sun in speckles across the table.  “I dunno,” she said.  “I…it’s hard to explain.  You probably don’t have time.”

She saw Gendry check his phone for the time out of the corner of her eye, then he sat down at the table across from her.  “I don’t have a meeting till ten.  So it’s your schedule that’s restrictive.”

She looked at him sharply. His eyes were so serious, and his soft dark hair was falling across his forehead.  He needed a haircut.  _So do I, probably_ , Arya thought.  She kept finding split ends in her ponytails. But she didn’t even know where one would go to get one’s haircut in town.  She hadn’t had a haircut since before she’d moved to the area, since before Mycah had died.

She just stared at him, sitting across from her, watching as he raised a coffee mug that was too small for his big hands to his lips, his eyes locked on her face.

“I don’t know where to begin,” she said.

“Where are your thoughts right now?” Gendry asked.  Then he flinched and yelped.  “Ow!”

“Burned your tongue?”

He nodded, grimacing, and Arya slid a cup of water that she’d gotten with her coffee across the table to him.  “Thanks,” he said, taking a quick sip. 

“My dad always used to do that,” Arya said, remembering suddenly, as if through a fog. “When I was a kid. He’d always burn his tongue on coffee, and my mom would make fun of him.”

“Yeah. I don’t usually,” Gendry grumbled. “He did it a lot?”

“Yeah. Mum used to say that he was a great big fool who never learned from his mistakes.  Lovingly,” Arya added hastily, “She’d say that. It was an endearment.”

“I can see how it would be an endearment,” Gendry said.  “What does he do, your dad?”

“He died when I was ten,” Arya said slowly, and Gendry nodded, the expression around his eyes softening.

“That must have been hard.”

“It was,” she said. It had been.  She’d loved her mother—she really and honestly did, but sometimes, with her, Arya had felt as though she wasn’t good enough. She wasn’t artsy the way that Sansa was, and she was always getting into trouble and her mum was such an elitist about the friends that Arya made.  _About Mycah._

Her throat burned. Her eyes stung.

“My mum died a few years back,” Arya said.  “Breast cancer.”

“You must miss her,” Gendry said.  “Miss them both.”

“I do,” she said at once. “It’s…it’s hard to think about still. Sometimes I just want my mum, you know?” She was going to cry. Damn it, she knew she was. She hated feeling like this, like she was weak and broken and weepy about everything.  She downed the rest of her coffee and reached for her purse. “I’ve got to run. Nymeria’s waiting.”

“Give her a good pat for me,” he said. 

“Keep Lem away from plastic bags for me,” Arya retorted, hearing how fluttery her voice sounded. She wasn’t looking at him when she left, but she knew he was watching her, and she hoped she made it to the car before she fell apart again.

* * *

She next ran into him at the grocery store in the pet food isle.  He was filling his cart with a million kinds of cat food, while Arya restocked Nymeria’s kibble. 

“Does Nymeria like that you work with wolves?” Gendry asked her.  She felt relief flood over her.  No pushing her to talk about herself, no reminding her of her father enough to make it all too much.  Just an easy question.

“She’s used to it. She doesn’t like it, but she’s used to it,” Arya said, heaving a bag off the shelf.  Gendry grabbed it and lifted it easily and Arya tried not to be affronted.  She could have gotten it on her own, had done so plenty before, but he was stronger than her. Mycah used to get the dog food. _Damn it._

“I bet that must weird her out,” Gendry said.

“It’s worse at the clinic if I don’t shower first, honestly,” Arya said.  “Nothing like a scared dog who doesn’t know what’s happening in the middle of the night smelling wolf on you.”

“I can only imagine,” Gendry said.  “Bad enough when I come home smelling like dogs.”

Arya chuckled. “I bet that scares some of them,” she said. 

“Luke’s skittish about it the most.  I think when I came home after meeting Nymeria she refused to eat for about a day because he thought I’d gone over to the dark side.  Leaves took it in stride though.  And Lem, though that might have been because he wondered if the scent was edible.”

“Do they really never smell dogs?”

“Oh some of them do. The ones that like going outside certainly are used to it.  Our neighbor’s got a labrador.” She wondered if ‘our’ was him and the cats, or him and a roommate.  _Or a girlfriend._

But no. No she shouldn’t think that. Not when Mycah…

She looked down at the dog food, away from Gendry. 

“Did I say something?” Gendry asked her. 

“What? No,” Arya lied.

“Ok.” He didn’t sound like he believed her though, and Arya looked up at him.  She was so good at pretending.  She always had been.  Mycah had once called her a natural actress, able to adopt any persona that she wanted with ease and grace.  Maybe that had broken too with all the rest when he’d died.

“You really didn’t,” Arya said. “It’s just…I just thought of…” she shook her head and looked down at the dog food.  “Thanks for the help with the—”

“Now hang on,” Gendry said, and she was surprised at how his voice could sound both stern and gentle at once.  “If you’re upset and I did something—”

“I already said you didn’t.”

“You reacted, though, so it’s related.  At least let me know so that if it happens again I can—”

“There’s nothing you can do,” Arya said glumly.  There wasn’t anything anyone could do.  If Bran, or Jon, or Robb couldn’t help her, then why would this stranger be able to?

“Arya,” he said. “Look, I—”

“There’s just…just a lot, all right?  And I can handle it.”

“Can you?”

She gaped at him. This time, the words didn’t sound gentle, though they were still not unkind.  This time, there was the full force of that blue gaze.

“Yes,” she said at once.

“I really don’t believe you,” he said.

That got her angry. “So what?  It’s none of your damn business.”

“No,” he agreed, “It’s not.”  And with that, he turned back towards the cat food and Arya pushed her cart towards the check out counter, steaming.

It wasn’t until much later, when she was curled up next to Nymeria on the floor of the living room that she realized that no—it wasn’t his business at all.  But it was the first time in two years that someone had asked her if she was handling it, and who hadn’t taken her response at face value.

She buried her face into Nymeria’s neck and hugged her dog close and wondered if she’d gone and ruined everything all over again.

* * *

She almost didn’t go to Sharna’s after her next all night shift.  She almost went straight home to instant coffee and a snuggle with Nymeria before she went off to the wolves again.  But even she couldn’t justify it.   _Coward_ , she thought angrily at herself.   _You like the coffee and you like Sharna’s. You’re just scared of seeing Gendry._

She was. She didn’t know when she’d become the kind of person to be afraid of seeing anyone.  That had never been her, and it shouldn’t be now. It wouldn’t be if she weren’t weak. It was her wounded pride more than whatever her gut was telling her that guided her from the clinic to Sharna’s.

She sat at her usual table by the window, drinking her coffee and looking at nothing, wondering if she should drink quickly and leave before Gendry got here, or if she should stay. _Coward_ , she thought again. _Coward coward coward._

She was afraid. Afraid she’d ruined everything like usual, afraid that she’d fallen so deep into whatever her head had become that she’d never be normal again, afraid of being normal.  She was just afraid.  And she hated it.

She thought of her mother after her father had died.  Her mother had been gaunt, and had put on a brave face for her children, but as far as she knew, her mother had never once been as broken as Arya was now. _I feel like I’ve got a hole in my heart,_ she thought. _Or a hole where my heart used to be.  Where Mycah was.  And mother. And father._ She drank her coffee.

It was the sound of a scraping chair that jerked her out of her reverie, and she found Gendry sitting across from her.  He had a paper coffee cup in hand, as though unsure whether he would stay long or not, and was wearing a tie with his sportscoat.  _He must have a meeting_ , she thought. 

“Look,” Gendry said, and there was something forceful in his eyes, but it didn’t seem forceful at her so much as at himself, “I know it’s not my business.  And you might not want anyone to care about it right now. But I do care. I do care that you look like you’ve not slept in years, and that you only ever seem something remotely like happy when you’re making my cat vomit up whatever he ate that he shouldn’t have, or that…” he scrambled for words, clearly trying to think of another thing. But he couldn’t, even. So he pressed on. “I’m just someone who tries to fix problems.  Jeyne says I have a complex over it because of the way I grew up.  But that doesn’t matter.  I’m not your shrink, and you’re not my field of social work. But I care, and it seems to me like you could do with some caring.  So will you let me care?”

Arya stared at him.

 _Will you let me care?_ No one had ever asked her that before.  Jon had always just cared, and Bran too.  Her mother had cared in her own way, even if it had hurt sometimes, and her father had loved her.  Robb cared, she knew, but never in the way she needed, and Sansa had never been more inaccessible than when she was with Joffrey, but she…she’d care too, wouldn’t she? And Mycah…Mycah had loved her most of all, and had cared for her and cared about her, but he’d never asked he’d just done it.  _You never made him ask,_ she thought.  _You just let it happen._

She looked at Gendry.

Could she let him care? She took a shaking breath. Then another, and another. He was watching her carefully.

“Social worker?” she asked. “Do you think I’m a basket case, or something?”

“I focus on the foster system, so even if you are a basket case, unless you’ve got a kid that you’re not taking care of, my professional opinion is irrelevant. You haven’t got a kid you’re not taking care of, do you?”

She thought of Mycah and the park and imagining pushing little black haired blue eyed children on the swingset while Nymeria watched.  She shook her head.

“No, just Nymeria.”

Something flickered in Gendry’s eyes and she held her breath waiting.  But the question didn’t come.  “What’s his name?” Gendry asked at last, and he pointed to the ring on her finger.  She looked at it, twinkling and happy on her finger, a symbol of some promise that didn’t matter now.

“Mycah,” she said and her voice cracked.  “His name was Mycah.”

And she looked back at Gendry and saw comprehension dawning on his face.  And when pity filled his eyes, she felt some sort of relief at last.


	5. Chapter 5

Arya got home that afternoon from the reserve and sat down on the sofa in the living room. It was the first time in what felt like a long time that her mind was reeling in a way that wasn’t…it didn’t hurt. It didn’t hurt the way it usually did, wracked with guilt that she hadn’t called Jon in ages, that she was lying to Bran and Robb, that she hadn’t even been to her mother’s grave since the burial, that Mycah was gone.

She was thinking about Gendry.

Gendry, who had a million cats and who was a social worker and who wanted to care about her, but only if she’d let him, and she’d not said no.  She’d not said no, and instead of feeling some odd crushing guilt, she felt calm for the first time in two years. 

She didn’t dare feel excited, though.  She knew her state of mind these days too well to think that there might not be the possibility of that perhaps the crushing guilt would come tomorrow.  _Don’t think like that_ , she thought, and it was like her old self, the self before Mycah had died, because for once she listened.

Nymeria came and sat with her, large tail thunking heavily against the hardwood floor as she wagged it, and Arya wondered if she could smell that something was different. Or sense it somehow. Sometimes she felt as though Nymeria understood her better than anyone on the planet, that they were one somehow. Mycah had once joked that Arya’s soul had split in two and one half had gone into her dog. “ _It’s why you fell in love with me,”_ he’d teased, “ _it’s much easier to lose half your soul to one person than your whole soul.”_ She’d elbowed him then kissed him to prove that she did still love him, even when he was being stupid.

 _Gods_ , she missed him.  Missed his smile, missed the warmth of him, missed the way he’d get home twenty minutes after her and come and sit next to her on this very couch and rest his head against her shoulder for a minute before always asking some ridiculous question about why the world was the way it was—whether it was traffic patterns, or global warming, or blonde preppy douchebags. She missed him so much, couldn’t bear that he was gone, and that he’d died so soon after mom had and she couldn’t talk about it with anyone because if she did she’d be making their own grief worse by lumping her problems on it, and they’d only just moved here, and she hadn’t known anyone but Sandor and he wasn’t the type to bare your soul to.

It ached. That familiar ache. But it was different, somehow. Different, because she’d had coffee with someone that morning, and he’d known the truth of it, and maybe she’d feel a little less alone now.  It would be nice to feel a little less alone.  Maybe she’d be more like herself. 

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” she asked no one in particular, and Nymeria perked up her head, wondering what Arya was talking about.  Her voice sounded thin in the living room, echoing off walls that had never had the photographs she and Mycah had planned to hang on them. She felt stupid saying them. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Stupid, horrible, ugly little Arya horseface.

She leaned over and buried her face in Nymeria’s fur, breathing in the scent of her dog and trying to remember why she’d felt relieved when she’d sat down, and how Gendry had made her feel that way.

To her surprise, it almost worked.  She thought of the way he’d leaned across the table, his cup in his hands and simply looked at her. She was unused to being looked at these days.  She spent so much time on her own with the wolves, and night shifts at the clinic with panicked pet owners who couldn’t tear their eyes away from their wheezing dog…she couldn’t blame them that.  But she’d forgotten what it was like to be really seen. 

She pulled her face out of Nymeria’s fur and looked around.  The living room looked as it did always.  A few stray plates she’d not yet put away, and an empty beer bottle or two. Her pillow and blanket on the dog bed by the empty fire place so that she wouldn’t wake up with a crick in her neck after sleeping next to Nymeria.  A few bits of stray laundry that she should put in the laundry basket, but just hadn’t gotten around to yet…

She’d never been a neat person.  Her mother had bemoaned it constantly.  “ _Your sister is so neat, Arya, why can’t you put your shoes away?_ ” She had gotten neater in college, when she’d really felt in control of her own space, and with Mycah who was a bit of a neat freak.  But since he’d died, since her mother had died, it was as though everything that had made her want to be clean had just stopped, as though she could stop pretending now—pretending for Mycah that she was as much of a neat freak as he was, pretending to her mother that she could be like Sansa if she tried very hard…

 _I miss my mother,_ she thought sadly. Even when it hurt, she missed her. She missed her laughter, and her smile, and the way that she would put down whatever she was doing to comfort Arya. _Maybe if she hadn’t died first, I’d be ok?_ Arya thought, and felt a loose tear dripping down her face.  _Maybe…_

She bit the thought back, chewing on her lip so hard it hurt.  She was supposed to be letting the calm make her feel better. She was supposed to be thinking about letting Gendry care.

Her brothers had never come here.  They’d made noises about it, but Bran was starting up another term at uni, and Robb was busy, and Jon was getting ready for Lya, and they’d none of them ever been. Maybe if they had it wouldn’t be so bad since she’d have memories of them here to accompany the memories of Mycah. But then again, if they had, then maybe something bad would have happened to them too.

She pulled her phone out of her pocket and ran her fingers over the screen, staring at her woefully small contact list.  Her fingers hovered over Jon’s name, and the profile picture that automatically synced to his Codex account.  It was him, and Ygritte, holding little Lya between them, smiling.

They’d named her Lyanna after her father’s sister, and Jon had named Arya godmother. She’d only ever seen her right after she’d been born, when Jon had come to her mother’s funeral. _Am I going to be as much a ghost to her as Aunt Lyanna is to me, even though I’m alive?_

She felt her throat constrict at the thought, and pressed her thumb onto the icon and a moment later, the green call button was filling the screen.

She almost hung up right away, before Jon could pick up as panic flooded through her. She hadn’t spoken to him in so long. What would she even say?

“Arya?” He sounded surprised to hear her.

“Hi Jon,” she heard herself say. 

“What’s going on? Is everything ok?”

“Just thought I’d say hello.  Are things going all right?”

“Yeah. Not too bad.  Lya’s saying ‘no’ to everything just because she can and it’s driving me and Ygritte mental.  The twos are indeed terrible.  It doesn’t help that she looks like you and I end up giving her everything she wants.”

Arya tried to imagine herself that young.  She couldn’t remember herself, but she could remember Jon.  When she’d been sad and little—the only one of them to look like father, and afraid of being some sort of changeling, she’d gone to Jon and he’d comforted her and promised her that she was in fact Arya Stark, and his little sister, and that anyone who said otherwise could take it up with him.

“I bet you’re spoiling her rotton,” Arya said. 

“Yeah, well, I hear that’s what you do with your first.  Just look at Robb.  Your mum let him get away with anything.”

 _Him and Sansa.  And none left for me.  And by the time it was Bran and Rickon, she had already been overhard on me and dialed it back for them._ “Hmmmm,” was all she said. She could have said it to Jon. She could have. Once she would have. Jon of all people wouldn’t begrudge her complaining about her mother.  But it was her mother and her mother was dead and you can’t speak ill of the dead. You _can’t_.

“What are you up to? You’re still working for the reserve, yeah?”

“Yes,” Arya said. “Same old.  Nothing new.”  She felt herself cringing as she said it.  It was too painfully true.  Nothing had changed since Mycah had died.  Her heart was just as broken, and she didn’t know how to say it, couldn’t bring herself to say it, not while Jon was sitting there excited about how much he loved his daughter. _It’s Jon_ , she said.  _But it will make him feel terrible if he knows that he hasn’t been here for me_.

Because it would. So she’d never tell him. She’d fix herself first and then when she was better…

 _You’re not getting better,_ said some voice in her head and it sounded like Sansa.  _You’re horrible.  Rotton._ It had been years since Sansa had called her that—not since she was ten right before father had died, but that didn’t mean she didn’t hear it in Sansa’s voice sometimes.

“Well,” Jon said, his voice dragging the word out, and she wondered if he believed her. It sounded like he might not, but if he did, he didn’t say it.  “Well, sometimes steadiness is ok?”  He sounded hopeful, like that’s what he wanted to believe. 

So Arya let him believe it. “Yeah.  Yeah, sometimes.”  She thought of Gendry that morning, blue eyes intense as he’d locked his gaze onto hers. She wondered what he’d say if he saw how bad she really was.  So she’d wouldn’t let him see it.  She was good at pretending.  She could pretend that she was all right for him.  “Sometimes it’s just how it is, you know?”

* * *

Gendry must have added Arya on Codex, because magically his contact information appeared in her phone, and she was sure the same happened in his.  He’d see the picture she had changed to just after Mycah died and she couldn’t bear to look at the picture of her grinning while he kissed her cheek. It was a “throwback” to when she was at uni of her burying her face in Nymeria’s fur and grinning over the top of the dog’s fluffy back.  Mycah had said her eyes twinkled like starlight in that picture.  They didn’t twinkle like anything now.  Part of her wondered if she should change it to something else. A baby picture, or something cutesy that didn’t show just how different she was now.  She didn’t in the end, though.  It felt too obvious.  It felt like giving in.

It made a difference, though, having Gendry’s contact information in her phone. Like she could text someone in town if she wanted to do something.  Not that she knew what she’d want to do.  But she almost believed that Gendry would want to do something with her, even if he still didn’t know how much of a shadow she was now compared to how she’d been only a few years ago.   She’d only scrolled through his profile once, right after he added her, just to see. He wasn’t the sort to post a lot of status updates or pictures.  No one seemed to post much on his wall, either, except for Willow Heddle tagging him in pictures of cats.  His profile picture was nice enough, and Arya did her best not to be too jarred by his staring out of her contacts app, which always showed the face of the most recently “active” contact which, in this case, was the new addition of Gendry. His face glanced out of a small square picture where he was wearing a beanie and wasn’t fully clean-shaven and was drinking a cup of coffee.  It was, she thought, a good picture of him.  He didn’t look grouchy at all, and Arya wondered what cup of coffee he had been on when the picture had been taken.

He looked particularly grouchy one morning when Arya saw him come into the coffee shop. He was clean-shaven, and his hair was wet from having showered, but there were dark circles under his eyes.

“Everything all right?” she asked him hesitantly when he sat down across from her.

“It’s fine,” he said, bringing the coffee to his lips.  “Not a big deal.”

“Cat problems?”

“Nah,” he said. His face was already relaxing as the warmed caffeine entered his body.  “Well, kind of.  I stayed up watching the Ravens game which I probably shouldn’t have done.  And then Huntsman and Harwin got into it in the middle of the night over my laundry.  What they could have wanted with that…”  He shook himself. “Anyway.  Coffee. Cures all ails.”

“Quite the caffeine addict,” Arya joked.

“Well, it serves its purpose quite nicely,” he said, shrugging.  “Especially after I stay up too late watching football.”

“Your team’s the Ravens?” she asks.

“Yeah.” He made a face. “Should be the Crowns probably, but fuck King’s Landing.  I wasn’t happy there.  Also they suck and the Ravens are good.  Do you follow football at all?”

Arya shook her head. “I should probably like the Wolves for family reasons, but no one really cared too much about sports at home when I was growing up.”  She paused, considering. “Mycah liked the Chargers.”

Gendry made a face. “Anyone but the Chargers,” and Arya almost laughed. 

“Are you such a die-hard sports-fan that this will be a problem?” she asked.

Gendry shook his head and took a quick sip of his coffee.  “Maybe once, but I’ve matured since then.  Also, you said it was Mycah, not you.”

Arya bit her lip. She remembered Mycah putting on his brown and gold and red jerseys to watch games, and how it had all clashed horribly with his red hair.  “No,” she said quietly.  “Not me.”  She looked at Gendry, trying to think of anything to ask, to change the subject, to keep her from thinking about Mycah so she could get through her day.  “Did you play football at all growing up?  For school or anything?”

Gendry shook his head. “Nah.  Most of the guys on the team were prats anyway. I might’ve done, but I didn’t really enjoy the sport until I got to college anyway.  Purely a spectator.”

“I’d’ve thought with a build like yours,” Arya inclined her head towards his shoulders.

“You and everyone else,” Gendry shrugged.  “Nah. I never did sports. Lifting sure.  But that was different. Someone came after me for a rowing team once, but I couldn’t be fucked to wake up that early in the morning. Besides…” his voice trailed away and Arya cocked her head, waiting.  “Besides, they only thought they wanted me.  Wanted my shoulders or whatever.”

And there it was again, that defensive look that Arya saw in his Codex pictures, and Arya felt something flicker inside her, something she hadn’t felt in a while, so subtle she almost missed it.   Fondness. Simple, genuine fondness.


	6. Chapter 6

_Can you please come and eat at the restaurant on Smithsday? I need someone to be brutally honest with me before the critics come in, and I know you won’t pull your punches. You can even bring a friend, and I won’t charge you._

_Please please please._

Gendry looked at his phone, before giving it a wry smile.  Jeyne must truly be desperate if she was asking him to eat at her place, especially after years spent telling him he’d not be able to ever get a free meal off her just because he was her brother.  _The contractors broke her_ , he thought. 

“Smith!” hollered one of the baristas, and Gendry looked up from his phone and took the extra large coffee that had his last name scrawled in barely legible writing on the side. He took a sip and felt his whole body begin to relax now that it knew caffeine was near.  He looked around.  It was Warriorsday, and Arya always volunteered on Mothersday nights. And there she was in a corner, staring at her own coffee and looking blankly out the window the way she so often did.

“Any idiots?” he asked her, stopping by her table.  She looked around and he saw her force a smile onto her face. 

“Someone actually brought in a sheep that was having heart problems,” she said. She even sounded excited. “It was fascinating. I can’t remember the last time I worked with a sheep.”

“Better scrub off good or the wolves will be out for blood,” Gendry half-joked. Arya’s eyebrows twitched in amusement, but she didn’t reply.  Instead, she gathered her belongings, as though Gendry’s arrival, somewhat later today than usual, was some alarm that had gone off and reminded her that she needed to get home.  “You busy on Smithsday?” he asked her as they walked out to the parking lot together. He could ask one of his colleagues, he supposed, but he wasn’t very close to them.  He wasn’t very close to anyone apart from Jeyne and Willow. _Why would anyone want to be close to me? I’m horrible._  Maybe he shouldn’t have asked Arya, but it was far too late for that.  He took a sip of coffee.

“Smithsday?” Arya asked. “No.  Why?”

“My sister’s inn just opened a few days ago and she needs me to go and be brutally honest with her about the restaurant before the critics begin to show up.  Want to come with me?”

He saw Arya bite her lip for a moment, then she took a deep breath.  “Yeah, I think I could go,” she said.  “What time were you thinking?”

Gendry looked down at his phone.  Jeyne hadn’t given him a time.  “I’ll check with Jeyne and let you know?”

Arya nodded understandingly and waved goodbye as she got into her car.  Gendry waved back, then shook himself, and prepared himself mentally for his nine o’clock meeting.

* * *

“Mrs. Farmer is nice to you?” Gendry asked Aemma, crouching down in front of her. He almost dreaded the girl’s response. She wasn’t taking well to her foster home.  That didn’t surprise Gendry. Not at all, but still, it was unwelcome.  _You don’t know that you’re better off_ , he thought sadly.

Aemma nodded sadly, her lip quivering.

“But,” Gendry prompted, reaching out a hand. 

“But I miss my mommy,” Aemma said, and there were the tears he had been dreading. He heard a stirring in the next room and knew that Lorinda Farmer had been listening at the door.  _She shouldn’t be surprised by that,_ Gendry thought.  It was understandable. Aemma was scared, and even if she had someone who made sure she ate and kept her room clean and got her to school every day, that didn’t mean she wouldn’t miss her mother. 

“I’m sure she misses you too,” Gendry said.  He’d received several not-so-polite phone calls to that effect.  He wondered if his mum had ever missed him enough to call his social worker and scream at her.  “And I’m sure you’ll see her again.”  _When she’s legally allowed near you, and when I’m present_.  That was the next item on the agenda.  Convincing Minella that if she wanted to see her daughter again, it was going to be with a social worker present.  Minella currently thought that that was something she’d sooner die than do, so she’d been kept away from Aemma. 

“When?” Aemma asked and Gendry sighed internally.  He should have known that Aemma would ask that.  They always did, that vague hope in their faces, mixed with some tinge of fear, though whether it was fear that it would or would not happen, Gendry was never certain.

“When she’s able,” Gendry said.  He squeezed Aemma’s shoulder.

“She ready?” asked Kevan Farmer, coming into the kitchen.  He was holding Aemma’s new backpack, pink with sparkling unicorns on it, and Aemma got to her feet and went towards him.

“Have a good day at school, Aemma,” Gendry said and she waved to him as Mr. Farmer led her out into the driveway.  Lorinda came into the kitchen.

“She misses her mum,” Lorinda said sagely, as if she hadn’t overheard the conversation, and Gendry nodded.  “Coffee?” she asked him.

“Please,” he said. He’d need it if he was going to try and contact Minella when he got into the office that day, even after having been to Sharna’s. He thought briefly of Arya, and how she was coming to Jeyne’s with him for dinner, how she’d agreed with barely any hesitation. That, at least, was progress he supposed.

“She’s a good girl, comparatively speaking,” Lorinda said.  “Quiet, and sad, but I’d prefer quiet to rowdy any day.”

“You’d have hated me,” Gendry said, smiling and accepting the coffee cup from her.

“Were you in the system?” Lorinda asked.  Gendry nodded as he sipped.

“Proper nightmare until I was about sixteen.  Then I had some foster sisters who helped calm me down.”  Well, that was part of it anyway.  He should call Bella and see how she was doing.  And the twins. 

“That’s good,” said Lorinda.  “Good that that was the effect, anyway,” she added quickly.  “And that the system works.”

“Can work. I don’t think it was the system that straightened me out.  But I think it can work, with the right pairing.”  He opened his folder and skimmed over some notes from Aemma’s file. “Has she been to see any of her friends from before?  Matthos and Darren and Selma?”

“She sees them at school. She’s made no noises about a playdate, so I haven’t pursued it.  I thought to wait and see how she adjusts.”

Gendry nodded. _That’s good_ , he thought.  “She hasn’t described any fights with them, or them ignoring her?”

“No, but she’s very quiet. I’ll make a point of asking.”

“Please do,” he said. Quiet and sad.  _Like Arya_.  Except when she’d ridden Arya’s dog around the park, how happy she’d looked, and Arya had a special smile that she saved for Nymeria.

“You don’t have any pets, am I right?”

“Kevan has a lizard he keeps down in his office.”

“But nothing fluffy. Not a dog or a cat?”

Lorinda shook her head. “Stacey was allergic to cats, and I haven’t the time to walk a dog.” 

“Makes sense,” Gendry said, finishing his coffee and getting to his feet.  “Maybe bring her round to the dog park some afternoons after school.  She likes dogs.”

Lorinda nodded. “I’ll do my best to remember,” she said.

* * *

His phone’s GPS brought him around a sharp curve right after he turned onto Wildwood Road and Gendry—a careful if fast driver—slowed the car mid-turn.  He couldn’t fathom what that curve would be like in the dark or in shitty weather.  He drove another few miles before his phone told him that he’d reached his destination and he pulled into the driveway of a large white house.  He saw Arya’s car, and he saw her dog sitting on the overgrown front lawn. 

Nymeria raised her head when he got out of the car, and he went and knelt down next to her, letting her sniff at his fingers.  She licked them, her tail thumping against the grass in welcome and Gendry ran his other hand over her fur, stroking it as he would his cats.  He’d seen people be more aggressive when patting dogs, but he’d never managed that.  Cats needed to be stroked lovingly and tolerated no high-energy pats without a set of claws hooking into your hand—he didn’t see why dogs would like or appreciate that either.

Nymeria yawned, her tongue extending out of her mouth slightly, and Gendry heard the door open and looked up to see Arya.  Her hair was towel-dried and she was wearing a dress that looked a little too big for her, as though she’d lost weight since she’d last worn it.

“Some guard dog,” she said dryly.  “What if he’d been trying to rob me?  Suckered into submission by pats.”  She crouched down next to Nymeria too and ran her hands vigorously over the old dog’s stomach. “Oh, you’re as gentle as a pussy cat, aren’t you?” she said as Nymeria lolled and drooled.  She looked up at Gendry.  “I hope you weren’t waiting too long.”

“Just got here,” he said.

“I’ll put her inside and grab my coat,” she said.  “Come on you silly girl.”  She helped lug the dog to her feet and led her into the house.  A moment later, she came out wearing a black leather jacket, tucking her phone into her pocket as she did so. 

“Right,” he said, once he was on the road, driving back towards town.  “So…” his voice trailed away and every thought he’d had about what they’d talk about on their way to the restaurant died. He couldn’t remember a single topic of conversation as he drove the two miles down towards the main road. It was as though he were sixteen again, and too angry with the world to even begin to know how to communicate in a way that was affective.  He was suddenly made very aware at how loudly the Bull’s old engine was.  He hoped, at least, the battery wouldn’t die while they were at Jeyne’s.

He slowed his car again as he hit that sharp curve, and he saw Arya’s fingers tighten on the dashboard as he did so.

“That’s a killer turn, isn’t it?” Gendry said.

Arya snorted. “More than you know,” she said.

“Oh?”

“It killed Mycah.”

Gendry’s foot pressed down on the break suddenly and Arya let out a yelp.  He cursed.  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. That was an—”  The words died on his lips.  Arya was staring out the window, looking away from him, her arms crossed over her chest.

Silence stretched between them and Gendry heard only the sound of his heart thudding in his ears as he drove, his eyes flickering to Arya where she sat.  _Would she ask for him to take her back_? he thought, panicking for just a moment. But she didn’t. She turned to look at him, a determined look on her face.  “So, your sister—Jeyne, you said?  She was the one you were fostered with?”

Gendry could take a hint. “Not quite.  Her little sister, Willow.”

“Right. I forgot which one was older,” Arya said apologetically.  “And she’s an innkeeper.”

“Hotel Manager is I think the term that they use in the profession, but yeah.  An innkeeper.”

“Does she have nine hundred cats too?” Arya asked, and Gendry let himself chuckle. He was still watching her out of the corner of his eye as he drove, but if she was upset about his comment about the road, she didn’t show it.  At least, no more than she showed being obviously depressed.  _Let her let it go_ , Gendry thought to himself.  _You said it.  It’s how it is.  Just don’t be an ass again._

“Nahh. She puts up with mine. Used to live with me and would constantly get pissed off at Watty and Mudge because they’d sleep on her bed and then get annoyed at her when she tried to move them so she could go to sleep.”

Arya smiled. “As cats do.”

“Yep. They’re particularly possessive of that bed.  I think they like it better now that I don’t have a roommate.”

“They don’t miss her?”

“Jeyne’s…not one for cats,” Gendry said.  “She always wanted a dog, but I never got one, and she couldn’t be bothered to get one herself—not while she had Willow to take care of, and Willow was more than enough energy for a dog.”

“My mother used to say that about me,” Arya said, “Not that it stopped my dad from bringing home a basket full of puppies for us one day.  But she always said I was a handful.”  There was a wry smile on her face.

“What does—did—your mother do?”  Gendry asked her.

“She was a matriarch,” Arya said.  “She died around the same time Mycah did, actually.”  She was running her fingers along the dashboard. 

“I’m sorry,” Gendry said. “That must have been hard.”

He saw Arya jerk a nod. “The way it goes, though,” she said.

“That doesn’t make it easier.”

“No,” she said. “No, I suppose not. So you have Jeyne, and Willow. Any other foster siblings?” He knew she was deflecting. He knew it.  But if she was anything like a scared cat—Swampy Meg when he’d found her, for example—she wouldn’t necessarily stop being skittish if he tried to force her secrets out of her.  At some point he’d drag her out from under the bookshelf where she was hiding, but let her at least get a sense of him and his community. It was strange thinking of a grown woman like a scared kitten.  But then again, it wouldn’t be the first time that he’d thought that cats were easier than people.

“Not ones that I think about,” he said firmly.  “I have a few half-sisters that I’ve been in touch with over the years. And I’m sure there are more. My father…was a philanderer. Who didn’t pay child-support checks.”

“Ew,” Arya said.

“Yeah, pretty much,” Gendry said, sighing.  “But the half-sisters I’m not as close to as Jeyne and Willow.  I send them updates around midwinter, and am friends with them on the Codex, but….” He let his voice trail away.  He couldn’t think of a way to say it that didn’t sound terrible, in all honesty.  That the system had failed them, that Mya had a deep distrust of men, and Bella had finally managed to pull herself out of sex work, but the fact that she’d been driven to it to begin with…

“Any brothers?” Arya asked him.  “Half-brothers, I mean.”

“Some. In better states than me, for the most part.  I’m not close to them at all, though I know some of their names.  Just me and the sisters, really.  Have you got siblings?”

“Yes,” she said, and Gendry forced himself not to look surprised.  _What sorts of siblings leave her alone in a state of mind like this?_ he wondered uncharitably. “I’ve four brothers and a sister.”

“Oh wow,” Gendry said. “That’s a big family.”

“Yeah,” Arya said.

“They nearby?”

“No,” Arya said. “Jon’s up at the Wall, Sansa’s in King’s Landing, and Bran, Rickon, and Robb are at Winterfell.”

 _Arya Stark._ Gendry felt his eyes bug out of his head.  “No,” he said slowly. “You’re not…”

“Not what?” Arya asked.

“You’re not a _Stark_ Stark, are you? A ‘Stark of Winterfell’ Stark?”

She didn’t reply, and Gendry felt himself sit there numb with shock.  He’d never met a noblewoman before.  Not in his profession.  He dealt with the undersides of society, not the upper crust, but here she was, sitting in his car.  A Stark of Winterfell...he remembered hearing news stories about Lady Catelyn dying. Her brother Robb was in the news sometimes, when he deigned to join the House of Lords and do some legislating. He’d seen her bloody sister on the covers of magazines, all auburn haired and with a face thick with makeup. Arya Stark…He’d not heard that name though.

“Why are you a vet, then? If you’re noble?”

“Because I like it, maybe?” Arya said, peevishly.  “Because I like being more than just some fancy lady whose sole purpose is to exist on the arm of some man who everyone assumes hasn’t got a brain in her head or a purpose in her life the way that society trains highborn girls to be?”

Gendry felt suddenly very stupid.  “Yeah, that’s a good reason,” he said.

Arya snorted. “It is,” she agreed. There was an edge to her tone, and he was sure that she’d had this argument before.  _With her family, probably. Her parents.  Her mother._

Half an hour later, they pulled up to the CrissCross Inn, and Gendry led Arya through the lobby towards the dining room, where Jeyne was standing talking briskly to one of the servers. Her hair was coming out of its ponytail and she looked harassed. 

“Oh good,” she said when she saw him.  She took a deep breath, closed her eye for a moment and pulled a smile onto her face. “Hi!  Welcome,” she let Gendry give her a kiss on the cheek before she glanced at Arya. Gendry saw the way she scanned her, drinking in every detail of her appearance from her recently air-dried hair to the way her dress hung loose on her body and the black leather coat.  “I’m Jeyne,” she said, extending her hand.

“Arya,” Arya said. Gendry could see that she had a good grip when she shook Jeyne’s hand. 

“All right,” Jeyne said. “I’ll show you to your table.” She crossed the dining room, weaving her way through tables until she stopped next to one by the window overlooking the river.  “It’s been…” she began, then shook her head, rolling her eyes.  “Hectic is an understatement.  I swear I’m going insane,” she said to Gendry under her breath.

He ran a hand over her shoulder.  “It’ll be worth it,” he said.  “Keep your eyes on the prize.”

She gave him a derisive look, then took another deep breath.  “Yeah, I know,” she said.  “I’m so glad you came.”

“Of course I came,” he said.  “Now don’t worry about me and if you have a moment, come say hi.  But only if.”

“Don’t you dare pull your punches, Smith.”

“Since when have I pulled my punches, Heddle?”

She waved them off and Gendry turned to Arya.  She was pouring over the menu, reading each word intently, and Gendry followed suit.

“I can’t remember the last time I’ve been out to dinner,” Gendry said, as he scanned over salads and entrees and appetizers. 

“Hmm,” Arya hummed in agreement.

“It’s usually take-out or pasta or something,” Gendry continued.

“Same,” Arya responded simply.  “Mycah was the cook.”

“He was good?” Gendry asked.

“Yeah. His dad was a butcher, and I understand that he might have made some really good meats, but he was good about not making me feel crappy for being a vegetarian.”

“You’re vegetarian?” Gendry asked quickly.

“Yeah. I just came home from class one day after we’d worked on a chicken and I couldn’t conceive of eating one ever again. That was it, really.”

“Makes sense.”

Her lips twitched towards a smile as she folded the menu and placed it on the table next to her.

They sat in silence for a moment, and Gendry tried to run through topics of conversation in his head. What could they talk about?

 _Mycah_ , was the only thing he could think of. The thing he wanted to know most about. How Mycah had died he’d learned, but why Arya thought it was her fault…and her mother dying then too. It was sad enough to make his heart ache.

“What brought you and Mycah here?” he asked carefully, and Arya rattled off an answer that seemed practiced.

“Mycah got a job working at the clean energy clinic.  And there was a position at the reserve, so I applied and got it pretty quickly.”

“He worked on environmental stuff?”

“Yeah. He was an idealist first and foremost.” She tried to smile fondly, but it looked like a wince.

“And you?” Gendry asked.

Arya gave him a startled look.  “I think I was,” she said slowly.  “Before he died. My mum used to get pissed because I was getting married to him, though she never said anything about it. A Stark of Winterfell and a butcher’s boy…she probably thought it was beneath me, like vet school.”

“But you did it anyway,” Gendry pointed out.  “And you would have married him.”

“Of course. I loved him,” she said. “My mum cared too much about what society thought.  Her and Sansa and Robb too sometimes, though he hid it better.”

“You don’t?” Gendry asked.

“Do you always ask so many questions?” Arya demanded.

“Professional bleed,” Gendry said, shrugging. 

Arya gave him an odd look, as though there was something she wanted to say, but couldn’t quite bring herself to.  Instead, she just chewed her lip and looked out the window.

“Spit it out,” Gendry suggested. 

“I don’t know how,” she murmured.  “I used to. But I don’t anymore.”

Not entirely sure what she meant, Gendry said, “It’ll come back with practice.” She cocked her head at him. “At least,” he added quickly, “it usually does.”

“I don’t know if it can,” she said quietly.  “I don’t—there’s some part of me that’s…” but she shook her head, cutting herself off. “I don’t know if I can be who I was.”

“Of course you can’t,” Gendry says.  “You can never go back to being something you were before.  You’ve seen too much, and lived through too much. But that doesn’t mean you’re stuck being where you are now.  And especially if it’s a miserable place, you aren’t destined for it.  No matter what bad happened.”  He remembered Beric saying something like that when he’d been younger. It had been enough, even if it hadn’t been the case for him.

Arya opened her mouth to respond, but a waitress came over at that moment, and smiled between them. “Can I get you anything to drink to start you off, or are you ready to order?”

“I’m ready to order,” Gendry said, glancing at Arya, who nodded.  He gave her a look, and she opened her mouth.

“Oh. I’m going first. Can I get the butternut kale lasagna?” she asked, handing the menu over.

“Absolutely. And what would you like to drink with that?”

“What sorts of pale ales do you have?”

“Drowned Man, Baker’s Dozen, and Haunted Castle.”

“Haunted Castle, please.”

“All right,” the waitress turned to Gendry.  “And what can I get you?”

“The garlic glazed chicken, please,” Gendry said.  “And can I get the potatoes mashed?”

“You bet. Anything to drink?”

“I’m good with water.”

“All right,” she smiled.

Gendry looked back at Arya. She was watching him closely, but gave him a tentative smile. 

“What made you want to be a social worker?” she asked.  Gendry felt his hands clench into fists.  The real answer was obvious, it was Bella, and Mya, and Willow and Jeyne. It was maybe even the boy he’d been but couldn’t remember because of all the drinking and shouting until he’d been taken out of it. 

“Wanted to help people who were like me,” he said quietly.  “Kids don’t ask to be born, and they don’t ask to end up in families that don’t take care of them.  And it’s hard for them to pull through when that happens.  They’re young and don’t know what the world can be.  And I…” he swallowed.  Then smiled at her.

“You want to be what you never had,” Arya asked.

“I had a few decent social workers,” he added quickly.  “But on the whole, yeah.  I know what it is, what it can be, and I want to do what I can to make sure kids don’t end up…” _Like me._  

Arya nodded. “That’s…noble.”

“As much as a bastard from Flea Bottom can be,” he said.  Arya rolled her eyes.

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that nobility of spirit and nobility of blood have absolutely nothing to do with one another.”  She said it darkly, angrily almost.  Then reached over and took a sip of her beer.

It wasn’t the sort of dinner where conversation flowed nonstop, where they laughed and joked and talked incessantly.  They were quiet a fair amount of the time, and sometimes spoke, but for the most part, ate or watched one another.  Gendry did his best not to care about the silence.  He knew damn well why he was on edge about it—because he was worried that she was annoyed at him, or that dinner was, somehow, a bad idea.  Or maybe even that she’d regretted being his friend.

When they did speak, though, it was calm.  It was oddly light, even, all things considered.  Though her eyes remained empty, there was an attempt at energy to her long face, a warmth that had to be there somewhere buried deep beneath the darkness.

When they’d finished eating, Arya went to the bathroom quickly before they headed out and, as if waiting the whole evening for her to leave Gendry’s side, Jeyne pounced.

“Well?”

“It’s good,” Gendry said. “I enjoyed what I ate, and the service isn’t bad.  A bit rough around the edges but you’ll smooth that out.”

“Good. Do you think she was all right with the beer choices?” Jeyne asked.

“She didn’t seem to complain.  Didn’t make a comment about it, but I’d ask her.  I can’t even begin to be reliable on that front.”  Jeyne gave him a fond smile, then Gendry saw her eyes darken for just a moment and Gendry knew that look all too well.

“What?” he asked her.

“Nothing,” she said too quickly and Gendry raised his eyebrows.

“It’s really nothing. Jeb’s been texting me is all.” Gendry gave her a hard look and she raised her hands defensively.  “I haven’t been responding.  This is stressful, but not _that_ stressful, all right? I’m not about to do anything stupid.”

“You call me if you even begin to get tempted, all right?” Gendry said firmly.

Jeyne kissed his cheek. “You’re always my first call, Mr. Knight in Shining Armor.”  Gendry rolled his eyes at her.  “You had a good night though?  Did she enjoy herself?” Jeyne asked, looking over at the bathroom, from which Arya was now emerging.

“Yeah, it was good,” Gendry said.  Arya approached, smiling at Jeyne.

“You’ve got a lovely inn,” she said.

Jeyne grinned at her. “It’s nice to hear, though I’m still recovering from the contractors so it hasn’t quite sunk in.”

“Contractors are the worst,” Arya said firmly.  “My brother is paraplegic and we had to get parts of our home remodeled to accommodate his chair, and I swear my mum was going to breathe fire dealing with the contractors.”

Jeyne nodded knowingly. “I may have almost turned into a dragon once or twice,” she laughed. 

She bade them good night, and as Gendry walked Arya out to the car, he asked, “Your brother’s in a wheelchair?”

Arya nodded. “Bran.  He’s two years younger than me.  Fell out a window when he was seven.”

“Oh god,” Gendry murmured.

Arya gave him a look. “You worship the lord of light?”

He nodded. “Found the faith at that time in my life when I needed it,” he shrugged.  “If you’re from the north, I take it you worship the old gods.”

Arya inclined her head. “Yeah.  When I still pray.  It’s hard to, sometimes.”

“Mycah?”

“My parents more. They didn’t save my dad, or my mum. And they didn’t keep Bran from falling and breaking his back.  But I couldn’t change away from them, you know?  The Seven have never meant much to me, and the Lord of Light…that’s not enough of who I am.”

Gendry nodded. “It’s not for everyone, regardless of how evangelical it can be,” he said.

“What brought you to it?” she asked.

Gendry let out a laugh. “Trying to unlock all my secrets in one go, are you?”  As if he hadn’t been doing all he could to keep her away from the worst of it.

“You’ve been dragging mine out of me all night,” she retorted.

“Fair,” he said, “though this one involves my youthful alter ego who did not own cats and was not an easy going young fellow.  He reminds me tremendously of me before coffee.”  Gendry was almost surprised at how charming he made it sound, as if that side of him weren’t enough to make him ill.

Arya snorted. “Troublemaker?”

“That’s a word for it.” Gendry took a deep breath. “I told you I was part of the system. It wasn’t doing much for me, my foster parents didn’t care, my foster siblings before the Heddles didn’t care. I don’t know how much you know about teenagers when they know the world doesn’t care about them, but I was one of the better worst-case-scenarios of that.”

“Drugs?” Arya asked.

“Booze, mostly, thank god.” He thought of Jeyne and resisted a shudder. “Weed from time to time, but nothing like a good whiskey.  And I had a…well, I won’t call it a ‘come to god’ moment, but it was an eye-opener about how fucked up I was and I figured that if no one was going to care about me, I had to care about myself.  So I started. And the Lord of Light helped more than the Seven ever had.  Thoros is named after the priest who converted me, actually.”

“You named your cat after a priest?” Arya asked.

“Don’t worry, he was flattered when I told him about it,” Gendry said.  “He retired back in Myr where he was from originally. But he helped more than anyone else when it came to me becoming a man, I guess.  Him and Beric.  Beric was one of his congregants, actually.”

“Sounds like a good man.”

“Also a recovering alcoholic, which helps.”

“I was wondering,” Arya said.

“Hm?”

“If you thought of yourself as an alcoholic.”

“Oh yes,” Gendry said. “To hear some of my half-sisters talk, I come by it naturally.  Seems my fucking dad was one, and Mya had to deal with it, and it was a huge thing for Bella too.”

Arya made a sympathetic noise, and Gendry smiled at her. 

“It’s not so bad. I mean, it has been, but at this point…I haven’t had a drink in nearly twenty years.  I think it’s habit as much as desire not to drink that keeps me off it at this point.  And I’m a stubborn one.  Once I have a habit…”

“I’m the same,” she said, and Gendry tried not to think _I figured as much_ , as he slowed down to round the curve that had killed her fiancé. _Lord of Light, every day she drives past it twice if not more than that._ It was as if she didn’t want to forget.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Stubborn.  Used to drive my mum mad.  She always used to mutter that if you denied me anything, it became my heart’s desire.  I think she hoped by letting me go to vet school, I’d change my mind.  But again…stubborn.”

“You liked it, why shouldn’t you?”

“Exactly.” She sounded pleased that he agreed with her, and he wondered again how many people had told her she was wrong for doing this.

He pulled up in front of her house, and she gave him a small smile.  “Thanks for this,” she said.  “I haven’t had a night out in ages.  I had a good time.”

“I did as well,” Gendry said. 

“Do you have a long ride back?” Arya asked.

“Half an hour—less if the traffic’s ok, which who can tell at this time of night.” He glanced at the clock on the console. It really could go either way on a Smithsday.  “Do you mind if I run in and use your bathroom?”

Arya blinked, then inhaled as she spoke.  “Sure,” she said. She fumbled in her coat pocket for her keys, then got out of his car, and Gendry followed her.

“There’s, um, just behind the stairs,” she said, pointing down the hallway just inside the door, and Gendry went, wondering why she hadn’t turned the light on. He took his piss, and went to wash his hands, but there was barely any soap left in the soap dish. When he came back out into the hallway, the lights were still off, and Arya was standing by the door. Nymeria had come over and was sitting next to her, and she was running her hands over the dog’s fluffy fur.

“Want a light?” Gendry asked, hitting the light switch to his left and Arya started towards him as if to stop, but the light filled the hallway and living room and it took Gendry a moment to realize what he was seeing.

He’d been to all sorts of houses before, for people who were, for whatever reason, able to keep everything together.  Usually it was poverty. That was not an excuse that Arya Stark could use.

There was litter all over the floor of her living room, empty beer bottles, plates that had been left on the floor and licked clean by the dog.  He saw strewn dirty laundry and at last his eyes settled on the great dog bed by the empty fireplace where he saw a pillow and a blanket and he knew—just knew—that Arya lived in this room and this room alone, sleeping on the floor with her dog every night.

“It’s not what you think,” she said quickly.  “Nymeria’s old, and can’t come upstairs, so sometimes I sleep down here with her is all.” Her voice sounded smooth—too calm. Too practiced. A lie.

Gendry raised his eyebrows at her.  She didn’t even flinch. If anything she looked angry.

“Look, it’s none of your business how I live my life,” she snapped at him.

“That’s true,” Gendry said. “It’s not.  Except when I see this I worry.  Especially because if I’d come in here on the clock and you had a kid I’d wonder if you were capable in anyway of keeping a household.

“Are you even trying to take care of yourself?” he asked, and wished his tone didn’t sound so harsh. He sounded like one coffee and Lem’s been up all night vomiting Gendry, not four coffees and a good night’s sleep Gendry. 

“I’m doing fine,” Arya snapped.

Gendry shook his head. “I don’t think you are. No, I know—it’s been pretty clear for a while that I know you’re not.”

“And I don’t see how that’s your business,” she repeated angrily and Gendry sighed.

“You don’t seem to understand how caring about you and worrying about you works. You should sell this place. Start over somewhere that isn’t full of your dead fiancé’s ghost.”

Arya went cold. _No._ “You don’t seem to understand me.” Her voice sounded like ice cracking, and she saw Gendry’s eyes widen.  “So if you don’t mind—” She stood aside, making her desire that he leave clear.

Gendry sighed and walked through the door, turning before she shut it.  “I did have a good time tonight.”

She glowered at him. “It’s not your job to fix me,” she hissed.

“No,” Gendry agreed, “Only you can do that.  I’ll see you around.”

But as the door clicked shut behind him, he wondered if he would.


	7. Chapter 7

Arya spent the next two hours cleaning. She put all the dishes in the dishwasher, loaded her laundry into the laundry machine, changed the blanket and pillowcase she used when she slept, took out the recycling for collecting, took out the trash, swept and vacuumed until everything was spotless. Then, and only then, did she sit down on the bed next to Nymeria and press her face into her pup’s fur and to try to let sleep wash over her.

* * *

She avoided Sharna’s after that. She came straight home after her nights at the clinic and had her instant coffee, even if it tasted shitty. She put Nymeria out in the yard and drank it slowly, feeling not quite awake but a little less tired. She kept her phone tucked into her pocket, waiting to feel it vibrate, waiting for a text or a call from Gendry, apologizing. But it didn’t come.

 _He didn’t care in the end_ , she thought sadly. _Or maybe he gave up on caring._ She didn’t know which was worse—that he wasn’t what she thought he might be, or that she’d driven him away because he was…

She looked around the house. It was sparse. But she saw it as if with new eyes. It wasn’t lived in. It was survived in.

 _I’m surviving_ , she thought. _Not living._

She didn’t think Mycah would appreciate that. He’d be mad at her for it.

But it was all that she’d been able to manage. It wasn’t as though she had five children and a stepsone who needed her. It was just Nymeria and her, and she couldn’t even ask her mother how she’d managed after dad had died.

It was a thought that made a weight crush down on her chest. _Mommy_ , she thought, whimpering in her own mind. What wouldn’t she give to bury her face in her mom’s chest and let her mother run her hands over Arya’s back and somehow make it hurt less. _I miss you_ , she thought. Her, and her father, and it was as if her siblings were dead too, sometimes, because when things hurt, Arya wanted to call them but couldn’t bring herself to.

 _Surviving_ , she thought as she pulled her coat on over her t-shirt and drove out to work. _Surviving_ , she thought as went out into the woods on her own to see how the pack was doing. _Not living. Not really._

The last time she had really felt alive had been when Mycah had kissed her and asked her if they needed anything else or if it was just more laundry detergent.

She felt her face crumple at the thought. _I should have gone_ , she thought. _I knew he drove like an idiot. I should have gone. It was raining._ He’d been trying to be so nice and helpful after her mother had died, and then she’d gone and gotten him killed because she was too lazy to go and get it on her own.

The only time since then she’d felt even closet to alive was when Gendry had dragged her out to dinner. She’d almost felt…she didn’t know. She couldn’t say. That was the worst part. It wasn’t better but it was something and something was better than nothing.

Wasn’t it?

* * *

The trees had been stripped bare by a blustery, rainy morning and their branches looked skeletal as Arya drove home. It was already dark outside, what with winter just around the corner, and Arya couldn’t help but feel as though that was a relief. At least it would be less bright outside, and everyone would be a little less energetic once the cold really set in. Winter was the right season for loneliness and sadness. Arya had thought that last year when she’d been truly alone in winter for the first time in her life. It had been oddly fitting, even while her heart was in pieces.

When she unlocked the door to the house, Nymeria wasn’t waiting for Arya to let her out into the yard.

“Nymeria?” Arya called, then whistled. “Silly pup, don’t you need to pee?”

She didn’t hear anything—not even Nymeria’s snores that meant that she was sleeping fitfully through her old age.

She saw her lying on the dog bed where she’d clearly gone to sleep for the afternoon, but she wasn’t snoring, and her chest wasn’t moving, and Arya felt her legs give way under her.

“No,” she gulped, hardly recognizing her own voice. “No. No—Nymeria. No.” She dragged herself across the room on her knees and buried her face in Nymeria’s fur, her hands fumbling at the dog’s chest, but she knew that it was over. Arya was alone now. Really and truly alone now.

She sobbed into Nymeria’s fur, not able to form any thought beyond the spasms of misery crossing through her mind. Her heart had broken into a million pieces, hadn’t it? It had to have. And she held her pup tight until she’d cried every tear left in her body.

 _Jon,_ she thought, reaching for her phone. _I’ll call Jon. It won’t be…_

But Ghost had died a few years ago, and Jon had been sad about it for so long. And now he was happy—for what felt like the first time in his life—happy with Ygritte and little Lya. She couldn’t. She _couldn’t_. But who else was there for her to call? Her mother was gone. Mycah was gone.

_Will you let me care about you?_

And she called Gendry.

* * *

She heard him come in some time later through the door she’d not bothered to close when she’d come back from work, and he found her still lying on the dogbed next to Nymeria, her face still pressed in the dog’s fur. Nymeria was now wet with her tears, and it had taken Arya so long to stop crying that she hadn’t…she hadn’t…she hadn’t known that she had. She didn’t even know how long it had been until Gendry crouched down next to her and ran his hand along her back.

“She had a good old life,” he said quietly. “A really good one. I can’t imagine a better one for any dog than you.”

Arya gulped a sob, and nuzzled into Nymeria sooner. “I miss her,” she said. “I wasn’t ready for her to…I wasn’t…”

“I know,” Gendry said. “We never are. You’re still here though. You’re still here and you’re all right.” She could hear the lie in his voice.

“I’m not,” she sobbed. “I won’t ever be. Nymeria, and Mycah, and my dad, and my—I just want my mommy.” She sobbed again, and she felt Gendry’s hands at her shoulders now, lifting her up and bringing her to his chest.

That only made it worse.

“It’s my fault,” she wept, feeling her lips cracking as she spoke. The salt from her tears must have dried them out. “It’s my fault he’s dead. It’s my stupid stupid fault. I was the one who asked him to go to the grocery store, and it was raining, and he always took that curve too fast, it’s my—my—” she gulped for air and felt Gendry’s arms tighten around her.

“It’s not your fault,” he said gently, but Arya shook her head. He didn’t understand. “It’s not anyone’s fault. It just happened.”

How long she sobbed into his chest, she didn’t know. If she kept talking, she wasn’t aware. But something about him was calming as she cried for her father, for Mycah, for her mother. His arms around her were so different from her mother’s. Her mother’s grip was firm, but still felt soft, and she didn’t have Gendry’s muscled chest. She would run her hands through Arya’s hair and even if she was mad at Arya, and so often she had been, Arya had known that it would be all right, that her mommy would fix everything.

But Catelyn Stark was dead, and Arya had given all her misery to Mycah and now it was hurting her even more, guilt upon guilt upon guilt upon guilt, and now she didn’t even have Nymeria to hide her from the fact that she had been to drowned in her own grief about Mycah to properly mourn her mother, and that Mycah’s death was her fault, and that this house was supposed to have been their dream home, they were supposed to have children here and now it only had ghosts—Mycah’s, Nymeria’s, hers—

“I can’t stay here,” she blurted out into Gendry’s chest. “I can’t. I can’t.”

“No,” Gendry said gently. “I was going to suggest it. Do you have anyone nearby you can stay with? Or family in driving distance?”

Arya thought of her mother’s brother who she barely knew in Riverrun, then of Sansa in King’s Landing. She dreaded thinking what Sansa would do if Arya showed up on her doorstep because her dog died. She scrunched up her face to keep from crying again as she shook her head.

“I’ve got a guest room,” Gendry said. “You’re welcome to stay with me. I’d say you could check into a hotel, but I don’t want you alone, honestly.”

“I don’t want to be alone,” Arya heard herself say. “I’m tired of being alone.”

“Well, my million cats will keep you company,” Gendry said. “Or…they’ll look at you funny, and Watty and Mudge will get disgruntled that you’re taking up the guest bed and they’ll have to go elsewhere. But you won’t be alone.”

Arya nodded numbly.

“Are you ready to stand?” Gendry asked her. She didn’t reply, and he helped her to her feet. She took a deep breath and looked down at Nymeria.

“We need to bury her,” she said.

Gendry nodded slowly. “You put together some things that you can bring over to my place. I’ll put her in the trunk of my car. There’s a nice bit by the river in my yard we can bury her in if you like. Unless you had some place in—”

“No,” Arya said quickly. “No, that works fine.” She looked at Nymeria again, and felt her face contort again and looked away. She looked around the room. It was cleaner now than when Gendry had been here last. She went to the laundry basket in the corner and picked out some clothes she could wear to work for the rest of the week, putting them in a pile. As the pile got bigger and bigger, she dumped the laundry out of the basket and put the pile back into it. Then she went and fetched her blanket and her toiletries. She couldn’t think what else she might want. It was odd, and not particularly comforting. When she did look at the dog bed, she saw that it was empty and she closed her eyes again, but she’d cried all her tears for that day.

“Ready?” Gendry asked her. He was standing in the hallway. Arya nodded and when she reached him, he took the basket from her hands and she tugged her keys from her pocket.

“You didn’t have anything on—the stove, or something?”

She shook her head, and they went out to his car together.

They buried Nymeria behind Gendry’s house. Gendry dug the hole while Arya sat there, cradling Nymeria’s head in her lap. She knew she should be helping, but she couldn’t bring herself to move. Not yet.

When the dirt covered her, Arya followed Gendry inside, took a shower, and climbed onto the bed in the guest room and cried herself to sleep.


	8. Chapter 8

When Arya had stopped crying and he couldn’t hear any sound but breathing through the door to the room that had once been Jeyne’s, Gendry called his foster-sister.

“Hi,” Jeyne sighed into the phone when she picked up. “I can’t talk for long right now. I’m scheduling when reviewers can come.”

“It won’t be long,” Gendry said. “Look, I just…Arya’s dog died.”

“Oh dear,” Jeyne said automatically. “That must be hard.”

 _That’s not even the beginning of it_ , Gendry thought. “Yeah. Anyway, she’s staying over here for a time. Doesn’t want to be alone. Not in that house without her dog.” _I don’t want her to be alone_. Gendry knew better than to trust a lack of apparent history in self-harm, and especially if he was her only friend nearby…he wondered briefly whether she was close to her colleagues, or if she had any. He wasn’t particularly close to his. They reminded him too much of the shittier social workers who had worked with him when he was young. But he had Jeyne, and Willow, and his glaring of cats.

“Cats aren’t a substitute for dogs, Gendry, whatever you may think.”

“I wasn’t even beginning to imply that, but go ahead and put words in my mouth.”

“That was the nicer version of what I was going to say,” Jeyne said. Gendry rolled his eyes and waited for it. “Of course it’s ‘not like that,’” she crowed into the phone.

“Look, she’s severely depressed and still fucked up about her late fiancé. What kind of asshole would I be if I—”

“But you’re interested,” Jeyne said quickly.

“ _Jeyne_ ,” Gendry said, letting out a long hiss of air. “That’s hardly the point.”

“No—it is. What is the point is that you’ve hardly dated in your life and you’re an emotionally closed off fucker, for all you help little children all day every day, and that if you’re interested in someone, it’s a big deal, all right?”

“You’re making a mountain out of a mole hill.”

“When you don’t have many mole hills in your life, it’s easy to see how they break up the terrain.”

Gendry frowned. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“It’s late,” Jeyne said. “And I’m busy. That all?”

“Just saying that your room’s occupied for a time so if you need to come over it may end up being my bed or the couch.”

“I’m shuddering at you,” Jeyne said, and Gendry snorted. “Neither of those is a real option. There are too many cats.”

“Good luck scheduling, and if you need to talk off the stress—”

“I know, I know. I call you.”

“I’m serious Jeyne.”

“I know you are.” Her voice was soft, and given how she’d just snarked at him, quite gentle. “I love you for it, you know?” Her voice grew sturdier as she continued speaking. “And it’s _not_ a mole hill. It’s a mountain.”

“I’m going to call Willow. She’s usually nicer to me.”

Jeyne let out a “Ha!” and Gendry rolled his eyes. “Since when has that been true?” Gendry hung up the phone, still shaking his head at Jeyne. He looked around briefly and saw that Luke was sitting with arm’s reach and dragged the cat onto his lap. Luke was skittish and tried to wriggle away with a plaintive squeak, but Gendry held him firmly on his lap for a moment, petting him until he began to purr. Some cats wouldn’t have tolerated that. Ravella would have hissed at him and scratched, and gone away. But Luke just needed to be made to get over the change in movement before he settled on Gendry’s lap, even flopping a little so his stomach was facing the sky and Gendry could rub his hand through the soft white fur as he called Willow.

“Hey there,” she said, and he could tell right away that she had gum in her mouth.

“Hello to you too.”

“What’s the occasion?”

“I do call you.”

“Yeah, but usually for a reason.”

“Yeah, because you’re my sister.” It felt strange saying that sometimes. Not all the time, but right now was one of those times.

“Yeah, ok,” Willow said, shrugging. “What’s going on in your life?”

“A friend of mine just lost her dog and—”

“So you’re checking in on your best friends?” Willow snorted. Gendry frowned. Willow didn’t talk that way unless…

“How’s your trip planning going?” he asked her.

“It’s coming along,” Willow said. “We bought the plane tickets the other day. There’s seven of us going.”

“Who?” Gendry asked.

“Me, Joss, Aelinor, Ramma, Nora, and Joren.”

“That’s six,” Gendry said. He’d been counting, and he knew what was coming. He just knew it down in his gut.

“It was not. It was seven.”

“One—you. Two—Joss. Three—Aelinor. Four—Ramma. Five—Nora. Six—Jeb. That’s six. Who’d you leave off?”

“Wow you really counted, didn’t you?”

“Willow—” he felt himself getting angry because he _knew_ he just _knew_ , they’d gotten her into a new apartment and everything and now—

“Clydas is coming,” she said, and he could hear the angry defiance in his tone.

“ _Willow_.”

“Look, it’s none of your damn business, all right?”

“ _Willow_ , it _is_ my damn business when he hit you so hard you ended up in the hospital. What are you doing?”

“I’m living my life, and you should live yours, thanks,” Willow snapped heatedly. “I’m not _dating_ him, Gendry. We can be friends.”

“I don’t want you friends with him.” Gendry could hear the rage seething in his voice. “I want him booted all the way to Asshai.”

“Yeah, well, he’s friends with my friends. It’s hard to just cut him out, all right? Besides—”

“Willow—”

“Look, if you’re going to be like this—”

“What were you expecting?”

“Exactly this, which is why I didn’t want to tell you. It’s fine, Gendry. It’ll be fine.”

“You and I both—”

“No, you and I both don’t anything. You don’t get it. You’ve never dated anyone long enough for them to become part of your friend group, all right? I can be friends with Clydas. That doesn’t mean he’s going to hit me, all right?”

“He didn’t just hit you—he _hospitalized_ you.” It was late, and Arya was asleep and Gendry couldn’t shout, so he made his voice get quieter for dramatic effect.

“Yeah, and he feels bad about that.”

Gendry let out a bitter laugh. “Feels _bad about that?_ Are you shitting me Willow?”

“He does. Would you prefer he didn’t?”

“I don’t give a shit—he _beat_ you. And now you’re—”

“It’s not like I’m going to be alone with him. The other five’ll be there and if he puts a toe out of line—”

“Why are they still friends with him, anyway? That shows some proper loyalty.” To his surprise, Willow didn’t respond. “Will?”

“I’m going to bed,” she said sharply. “Goodnight, and thanks for calling.” And she hung up on him. Just hung up, like that.

Gendry stared at his phone for a moment, then looked down at Luke on his lap, whose eyes were closed and whose face was the picture of contented cat.

Suddenly, Gendry felt very tired. He wished he were a cat, and that he had someone to drag him onto their lap and pet him till he fell asleep.

* * *

Arya awoke to the sound of rain and scratching on the door.

That was strange. Nymeria didn’t scratch. Nymeria…

The bed was soft and the full weight of the day before hit her. Arya looked at her watch, then pulled out her phone and called work. It was still early—long before Sandor would be there, which was for the best. She didn’t want to explain to him what was wrong. She left a voice mail saying she was sick and that she would make up the hours some other time, even though she was entitled to ten sick days a year and never used any of them. Then she buried her face in the pillow that didn’t smell like Nymeria and didn’t smell like home. It smelled familiar though.

The scratching didn’t go away.

“Oy,” she heard Gendry say quietly on the other side of the door. “Let it be. You can’t go in there right now.”

Arya was tempted to put the pillow over her ears, but instead, she sat up, and looked around. She hadn’t taken notice of the room the day before. She’d been too dazed. It was sparse, and there was a chair in the corner that looked like it had been used as a scratching post. There were books on a shelf, and a closet whose door was ajar and looked as though it had some old clothes hanging in it.

“Up,” Arya told herself, and she climbed out of bed and opened the door to the bedroom.

Immediately upon the door opening, she felt fur on her ankle and heard Gendry say, “Mudge,” very exasperatedly. He gave Arya an apologetic look. “I can grab him out of there. He and Watty have been very annoyed you’ve been in there.”

“It’s fine,” she said. “I don’t mind them.”

“They’ll shed on everything,” Gendry warned.

She glanced over her shoulder. Mudge—a brown cat with tortoise patterns on his back, was sniffing the bed where she’d just been lying. He turned his head and glanced up at her, and Arya could tell he was gauging whether or not he thought she was the sort of creature he wanted on his bed.

“It’s fine,” she told Gendry. “Nymeria,” she swallowed, “shed on everything as well.”

Gendry was watching her closely as though expecting her to fall apart again. Arya couldn’t decide if that annoyed her or if she was glad. Instead, she looked at him and said, “Thanks for letting me stay here last night.”

“Of course,” he said, and she wondered if that’s what he sounded like when he was with upset children. “Stay as long as you like.”

Arya swallowed. “Don’t say that,” she said, trying to joke. “If you say that I might stay for much longer than you’d like.”

“Go for it,” Gendry shrugged. “It’s just me and the cats. I don’t mind.”

“I—you don’t mean that.”

“I do,” he said. “I don’t think you should go back to that house, honestly. You should sell it and put that part of your life to rest.”

Arya opened her mouth to protest, but instead, she just gaped at him. “I can’t. Mycah…”

“He’s dead,” Gendry said. “And I’m all for mourning the dead, and missing the ones you love, but I think that that house is too much. You won’t forget him, and you won’t stop loving him.”

“No,” Arya agreed, “I won’t. But—”

“Think on it, all right?” Gendry said. “And while you do, feel free to stay here, and sort out what you need to sort out. I’ll be here. Coffee before I drop you off?” Gendry asked her.

“Yeah,” Arya said slowly. He handed her a key to the house.

“I mean it. Stay here as long as you need.”

* * *

Gendry drove her home so she could pick up her car, and she didn’t even go in the house. She couldn’t bring herself to. Instead, she got into her car and reversed out of the driveway, and forty five minutes later, she was back at Gendry’s, wondering how it was that rush hour traffic could get so _bad_ in town. She let herself into the house and settled onto the couch in Gendry’s living room.

And it wasn’t really until she was alone in the house that she really was able to internalize how many fucking cats Gendry had.

When she went to put her coat down in the bedroom, she found Mudge and Watty sitting on the bed, giving her perturbed glances until she had disappeared from the room that was clearly “their” room more than hers.

When she sat down to watch television, one cat was sitting on the remote control, and three more were lying like puddles in the sunlight on the floor. Over the course of the thirty minute program, two more of them came over and sniffed at her feet, one of them climbed on her lap, and a fourth—Swampy Meg—poked her head out from the doorway to Gendry’s bedroom and watched her nervously.

She saw Lem trot in through the cat flap that led into the backyard where they’d buried Nymeria, bits of grass clinging to his whiskers. She watched Leaves give herself a bath next to a bookshelf, she saw little Thoros climb onto the table and nibble at crumbs from breakfast.

Arya shifted on the couch, the cat on her lap—name unknown—giving her a frustrated look and she ran a hand over its head to soothe it. Immediately, three cats began to freak out, and Arya blinked at them. She kept petting the cat on her lap, who stiffened and looked at the floor—at nothing Arya could see.

“What’s going on?” she asked the cat, scratching under its chin. The three cats who were tense started forward, and when she realized why she almost laughed. They were staring at the light that was bouncing off her watch, as though they thought it was some alien intruder. Arya twisted her wrist, making the light dart around the living room, and all three started forward once again. The cat in her lap jumped off and joined its friends in the hunt. Arya sat there idly for twenty minutes, not really watching the cooking program she’d turned on, amusing herself with making Gendry’s cats chase the light from her watch until slowly, they lost interest and went their own ways.

* * *

Gendry came home that night to find Arya on his couch asleep and the television on, and he let out a breath of relief. There was a part of him that had been frightened that she would have gone back to her house and he wouldn’t find her here.

He closed the door quietly, and immediately, Watty swaggered up to him and meowed.

“Oh shut up, I’m feeding you,” he said quietly. Watty meowed again, clearly pretending he didn’t understand. Gendry went into the kitchen and lugged out the cat food from the cabinet he’d had to keep it in ever since he’d come home to find that Watty had chewed through the bottom of the bag. Probably with Lem’s help. Lem had yet to find a plastic bag he didn’t enjoy chewing.

He scooped the food into Watty’s bowl in the pantry, then shut the door on the cat, and went to feed the rest of them. Some came quickly, others did not.

Gendry ran his hand over Harwin’s back before going and checking on Arya.

She was sitting up, and stretching and Gendry gave her a quiet smile. “How’d you sleep?” he asked her.

“Not bad,” she said, then flinched. “Though I think I have a crick in my neck now.”

“Want me to rub it?” She considered for a moment. “I wouldn’t offer if I didn’t mean it,” Gendry said. “That’s not how I function.”

“Sure, all right then,” Arya said, and he sat down next to her. She tugged her hair away to one side of her neck and Gendry began to rub her neck. She let out a sigh.

“Helping?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “Thanks. For…for everything.” She sounded embarrassed.

“Yeah, sure,” he said. He found the knot in her muscles and began to rub it harder. She inhaled sharply. “Too much?”

“No,” she said.

“So you got your car,” Gendry said, “How’d you spend the rest of your day?”

“Watching your cats, mostly. They’re a ridiculous lot.”

“Truly,” Gendry snorted. He could already hear Watty howling in the pantry, having finished his own food and knowing there was more to be had, and also knowing Gendry wouldn’t let him out until the others had at least had a go at their food.

“What’s the name of the little black one?” she asked. “Skinny, without the spots on her stomach?”

“Ravella,” Gendry said.

“She’s a sweety,” Arya said. “She sat with me while I watched TV.”

Gendry smiled. “She’s good. She also howls at nothing in the middle of the night. And always sleeps in the laundry.”

“You must be able to sleep through anything.”

“When I sleep,” Gendry sighed.

“Do you not sleep well?”

“Not enough,” he said. “Never have, not even when I was a kid. I have trouble falling asleep.”

“Oh,” Arya said simply. “What do you do with your time, then? If you’re not sleeping?” She glanced down at her watch. It was still fairly early in the evening.

“I work,” Gendry said. “Or I watch TV. Or I lift.” He nodded towards the laundry room, where he kept his free weights. “Or I play with these monsters. Or I take Lem to the damn clinic because he’s found out something new isn’t edible.”

Arya snorted. Her head was rolling down onto her chest and her eyes were closed. “Dinner?” he asked her.

“I haven’t done much today, so I’m not super hungry,” she said.

“Takeout, then? I’ll order a pizza and salad?”

“Sure.”

She looked over at him, and bit her lip.

“Yeah?” he asked her.

“You really don’t mind my staying, then?” she asked, and Gendry let out an exasperated huff. “I just don’t know how long I’d need to is all,” she added hastily.

“I really don’t mind,” Gendry said. “If you feel like you’re leeching, buy groceries or help with taxes or something. Pay rent. Whatever you like. I really don’t mind.”

He had never had a roommate that wasn’t Jeyne or Willow, but somehow, he felt as though Arya would be easy to live with. He didn’t know why. He’d always shied away from roommates in truth—too many shitty experiences with foster families growing up, and too many demons that came with those memories. He liked his space. But Arya for some reason wasn’t an intrusion. She should be, but she wasn’t. That gave him pause. He wanted her there with him. _Oh fuck you for thinking that, you asshole._

And if she was a nightmare to live with, well, he’d help her figure out what to do next with her life and would make sure it didn’t involve him. Simple as that.

“Right. Ok,” Arya said. “I’ll get the pizza then. What toppings?”

* * *

The drive from Gendry’s house to work was longer than from her house, and so Arya left earlier in the morning to get to the reserve. As a result, she ended up getting to work earlier than usual, and couldn’t even understand how, because traffic patterns made no sense. She sighed and flipped through her notes from the past few days before going out to check in on the wolves.

Sandor made no comment about Arya’s having phoned in sick yesterday, and she found notes he’d left for her on her desk. As she shuffled through them, she caught him looking at her. “Feeling better?” he asked awkwardly, clearly only asking because he’d been caught. Arya felt her throat tighten.

“No,” she said. “My dog died.”

“Oh,” he said, then, even more awkwardly, “Sorry about that. Dogs are too good to die.”

“Thanks,” she said and went back to her notes. She heard him sigh, clearly relieved that he didn’t have to make more serious conversation with her and they ignored each other for the rest of the morning. When Arya came back from her afternoon observation, though, she found a box of cookies on her desk, and Sandor was nowhere to be found.

It was strange—when she was with the wolves and at work, it felt like everything was the same—that Nymeria was alive and Mycah’s ghost still waited for her at home. Except when she got in the car and drove back to town, she didn’t turn off at River Road, and Nymeria was dead, but she wasn’t alone. She went to Gendry’s house and took a bath to wash away the scent of wolves while Ravella sat on the edge of the bathtub looking worried that Arya might drown in all that water and Luke and Sevens jumped into the empty tub to warm themselves against the porcelain when she’d finished.

She wasn’t alone.

* * *

They fell into a pattern. On the nights before Arya went to the clinic, Gendry would cook dinner. On the nights she didn’t go to the clinic, Arya would cook. Arya went to the grocery store three times a week—she did not approve of Gendry’s choice of vegetables—and when she came home, the cats would attack the plastic bags as she emptied them and put their contents away. If she was going to the clinic, Gendry would make her a big cup of coffee as part of her dinner. He had good coffee—better than she’d had back at her house.

“Coffee is important,” Gendry said.

“You’ve said that before,” Arya snorted.

“And I meant it.”

“How long have you been a caffeine addict, then?” she asked. “Did your job do it to you?”

“College,” he said, shrugging. “I was working full-time and taking classes and Jeyne and Willow were living with me. And I needed to drink something and I was determined it not be booze, so…” he nodded to the coffee. “And then I realized that it made me a more functional human and I haven’t looked back.”

“I’m sure _it’s_ not responsible for you being functional,” Arya said, pretending not to notice the way she always felt a little better with a mug of coffee in her own hands.

“If you like,” Gendry said. “But you’re wrong.”

Arya raised her eyebrows at him. “Oh?”

“Yeah.”

“Substantiate it.”

He blinked at her.

“Substantiate it? Is that vet lingo or something?”

Arya smiled wryly. She hadn’t meant to say that. She hadn’t in years. It was something Jon had used to say. She wasn’t sure where he’d gotten it. Boarding school, probably. But it had annoyed Mycah when she’d said it. He thought it sounded pretentious. Gendry probably did too.

“Jon,” she said by way of explanation, shrugging. “But go on.”

Gendry was frowning, thinking hard, and Arya waited, crossing her arms over her chest, her coffee sitting on the counter next to her dinner plate. She felt the brush of fur against her ankle and looked down to see Harwin rubbing his face against her leg. She bent down to scratch him behind the ears as Gendry spoke.

“It helps me be myself,” he said. “If it’s an addiction, I don’t care. I’m better when I have coffee.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Arya asked dryly. Harwin extended his neck and she moved from his ears to his chin, feeling purrs in his throat.

“I get angry when I’m tired,” Gendry said.

“Doesn’t everyone?”

“Yeah, but most everyone doesn’t have the same shit as I do to deal with.”

“Like what?” Arya asked, then bit her lip. Should she have asked that? It felt forward. She remembered days when she wouldn’t have given such a question a second thought.

“I’ve told you,” Gendry said, a little mulishly, and Arya flinched. She didn’t want him mad at her but even as she opened her mouth to apologize, he continued. “When I’m tired, I end up thinking really useless thoughts. Like wondering if my mum loved me, or if my dad cared about me—I know he didn’t, but god I wanted him to, even while not, you know?—or if I’ll ever really be normal and I’m just doing a good job pretending I am. When I have coffee, I don’t let myself think that way.”

“Is it really that simple?” Arya blurted out, looking at the mug of coffee. She wondered if it could be—if drinking caffeine could really help her control herself, or…or make things hurt less. Or make her think less about the hurtful things.

Gendry didn’t respond. He was watching her, and there was an odd look on his face. Arya hastened to ask another question. “Does it really take the bad away like that?”

Gendry shook his head. “No. Nothing takes the bad away.” He sighed and leaned against the refrigerator. “At least, nothing I’ve found. Sometimes good hides the bad, and takes the focus of life from it, which is nice, but only time can really help, and there are some things time can’t heal.”

Arya thought of Mycah, her mother, her father, Sansa’s and Jeyne’s taunts of _horseface_ and reached up for the coffee mug and took a sip of it. It warmed her. _What’s the worst thing that happened to you?_ she wanted to ask Gendry. _What’s the bad you can’t let away?_

Instead, she looked at Harwin, who had flopped on the floor of the kitchen and seemed to be inviting Arya to pet his stomach, so she did.

* * *

“So, since you’re here,” Gendry asked her one night after dinner, and Arya looked up from the dishwasher she was loading up. “Can I get your professional opinion on something?”

Arya stood up and wiped her hands on her jeans, raising her eyebrows slightly. “What did Lem eat this time?” she teased.

“It’s not Lem,” he said quickly. “It’s Sevens.” He pointed to the window. Sevens had long hair and was a medium sized cat with a squashed face.

“What’s wrong with Sevens?” she asked, kicking the dishwasher shut and crossing to the cat, picking him up and stroking him.

“He’s just gotten big is all. Not as big as Watty, obviously, but like…I haven’t noticed him eating more than usual.”

Arya twisted the cat in her lap and began brushing his fur aside to examine his belly—

“Sevens is queening,” she said, bemused. “Where’d you get her? Did you not get her spayed?”

“Wait—wait. Back up. Sevens is a girl?” Gendry said, clearly flustered.

“Yeah?” Arya said. She let the extremely affronted looking Sevens go. “Didn’t you take her in and get her spayed when you found her?”

“I adopted her through the bloody pet rescue center,” Gendry said, his eyes bugging out of his head. “God, Sevens is _pregnant?”_

“And they told you she was a neutered Tom?” Arya asked.

“That’s what the thing on the cage said,” Gendry grumbled. “ _Pregnant?_ Fuck.”

“As it were,” Arya smiled. Then she began to laugh. “Well, I’d guess she’s got another month or so before she gives birth. So…you’ll have even _more_ cats!”

Gendry glared at her and Arya patted the couch next to her and he sat down.

“I’m going to call that rescue center and give them a piece of my mind,” he grumbled, his head tilted back over the back of the couch.

“I’d do that. They shouldn’t spring unspayed females on people. I’m surprised she wasn’t spayed to begin with. Usually they spay them when they are rescued.”

“Lucky me,” Gendry said darkly. He looked at Sevens. “Who was it then, you minx?”

Sevens ignored him.

“It wouldn’t be one of yours,” Arya said.

“Yeah, I get them neutered. They multiply even without intending to anyway.” He looked at Sevens again. “Pregnant. Lord of Light protect me.” Arya patted him comfortingly, doing her best to seem supportive while suppressing a grin.

* * *

“Gendry muttered as he tried for the third time to turn his car on. But it didn’t make a sound, and a light on his dashboard just illuminated. _Check battery._ “Come on.” He dug out his phone as he looked around the parking lot. It was empty, his colleagues having departed as close to five o’clock as they could. Gendry cursed under his breath again. He could call Jeyne, but it would take her a good hour to get here in rush hour, and she was stressed enough as it was with the inn. He could call…who could he call? He didn’t have friends, just his cats and—

He almost laughed at his own stupidity. Arya. He could call Arya. So he did.

She picked up on the third ring. “Hi.” There was a lot of background noise, and he pictured her driving down county road four nineteen with her window slightly open, despite the chill in the air.

“Hey, are you on your way home?” he asked her.

“No, I’m on my way to the grocery store. You need anything?”

“Can you swing by my office? My battery died and I need to jump the car.”

“Oh shit,” Arya said. “Yeah. What’s the address?” He gave it to her and ten minutes later, he saw her car pull off the road and make its way towards his. She pulled into the parking spot behind him, rolling her window down as she shut off her car.

“Does it die often?” she asked him.

“Yeah,” Gendry sighed. “I should get a new one. I am waiting for the day that it falls apart under me.”

“Really? It looks in good condition,” Arya said.

Gendry made a face as he popped the hood of his car. “I try. It’s old. I got it when I was eighteen.”

“Wow,” Arya said. “Was it new then?”

Gendry shook his head. “I just take good care of it. It’s mine, you know? It’s got me far. But it is kind of failing.”

“You could just replace the battery?” Arya suggested as he moved between his car and hers, setting his jumper cables in place.

“Well, the frame also rattles sometimes, and is rusted through on the bottom.”

He saw recognition flash across Arya’s face. “I was wondering what that was. I thought it might be in my head.”

“Nope. It’s my car.” Gendry patted it, then climbed back into the driver’s seat. “Ok, go.”

She turned on her car, and he turned on his, sighing with relief when it was in order.

He turned on the headlights, then glanced at Arya. “Grocery store?” he asked.

“Don’t you have to drive it around for an hour to recharge the battery?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he sighed. “Good point.”

“I was just going to get some veggies. Do you need anything?”

“Cat food, probably,” Gendry said. “I trust your veterinarian skills to pick out what you think would be good.”

* * *

Gendry took Aemma to the park that Cronesday and they walked around together. Aemma was quiet, and Gendry watched her closely.

“How’s school going?” he asked her as she stamped down on the leaves that were falling from the trees. She didn’t respond. Not a good sign. School had always been something that Aemma had liked. It had provided her structure when Minella hadn’t been able to. “Do you like your classmates?”

Aemma shook her head vehemently, and Gendry crouched down. “What’s the matter?” he asked her. “You won’t get into trouble telling me,” he said, trying to keep his voice both firm and gentle.

“I got into trouble telling Mrs. Winterbottom,” Aemma mumbled, not looking at Gendry.

“I’m not Mrs. Winterbottom, am I?”

“Where’s the dog? The big dog that I got to ride?” Aemma asked, looking around hopefully. Gendry’s stomach gave a lurch as he followed her gaze to the bench where she had met Arya and Nymeria. It felt like ages ago.

“I’m afraid the dog moved away,” Gendry said. “She went to a farm over in the westerlands.”

“Did the owner move too?” Aemma asked. “Sometimes pets move without their owners.” Gendry wondered how many times Aemma had heard this excuse. _I hope it doesn’t give her bad ideas about permanency_ , Gendry thought. But he couldn’t bring himself to say that Nymeria had died.

“No,” he said. “Arya’s still in town.”

“Is she here today?” Aemma asked. Gendry looked around. He couldn’t imagine Arya in this park without Nymeria, but then again, just because he couldn’t imagine it didn’t mean she wouldn’t be here at all…

And sure enough, he saw her sitting under a tree, reading. “There she is,” he said quietly.

“Let’s go say hi,” Aemma insisted and she marched towards Arya.

Gendry was torn between saying that they shouldn’t interrupt her and thinking that it would be good for Arya to see that she’d made an impression on this little girl. Maybe seeing Arya would loosen her up a bit. He did still want to hear what was causing Aemma trouble in school.

“Hello,” Aemma said excitedly, and Arya looked up from her book. She smiled at the sight of her.

“Hello Aemma,” Arya said. She patted the grass next to her and Aemma sat down.

“I’m sorry about your dog,” Aemma said. “She was nice.”

Gendry saw Arya’s eyes flick to him and she took a deep breath. “Yeah. She was a good old thing,” Arya said. “Thank you.”

“Lorinda wants to get a dog,” Aemma said. “Her and Kevan are picking breeds, but they want a small dog like a pug. I want a big fluffy dog like yours.”

“Pugs are good dogs,” Arya said. “There are some lovely tiny ones.”

“But I want to _ride_ one,” Aemma insisted.

Arya let out a quiet huff of laughter. “Better get a big one fast, or you’ll be too big for it. You’re growing fast.”

Aemma paused. She hadn’t considered that. Gendry watched her closely. “She’ll still be good though,” Arya added. “The best friend you’ll ever have.”

Aemma’s face crumpled. “Wouldn’t take much.”

“What’s going on, Aemma?” Gendry asked, but Aemma just shook her head.

“Are your classmates being mean?” Arya asked her, and Aemma stared at her, wide-eyed.

“How’d you know?”

“A guess,” Arya said, wrapping her arm around Aemma’s shoulder.

“They keep calling me Weasel,” Aemma muttered, and Arya let out a sympathetic “oh” at the same time that Gendry made an angry noise in the back of his throat. Schoolyard bullying was the last thing that Aemma needed right now.

“Don’t listen to them,” he said gruffly. “They’re being mean and there’s no excuse for it.”

“But what if they’re right?” Aemma moaned and her eyes were shining. This wasn’t good. “What if I _do_ look like a weasel?”

“My sister and her friends used to call me horseface. Do I look like a horse to you?” Arya said, managing that firm but gentle tone that Gendry had aimed for with such ease that Gendry was almost distracted. Her face was alight with intensity, and her grey eyes were flashing. _She doesn’t look like a horse at all,_ Gendry thought angrily.

“N-no,” Aemma said, looking down at her hands and Arya wrapped her arms around the little girl.

“You don’t look like a weasel. I promise. I would know. I’m a vet. You’re lovely, and better than they are since they’re being mean to you for no reason at all.”

Aemma gave Arya a watery smile and hugged her back.

Later, when Arya and Gendry were walking back from the park to his house together, Gendry said, “Sorry about springing her on you like that.”

Arya gave him an odd look. “You weren’t springing her on me. She’s a sweet kid.”

“Yeah. She is. And thanks for helping talk her down. I don’t know if I’d have been able to manage that.” He paused, looking at her carefully. “No one ever really bullied me when I was a kid. I was always bigger than everyone else.”

“That would serve as an impediment,” Arya said, then sighed. “You didn’t bully kids, did you?”

“No,” he said quickly. _I wanted to though,_ he thought. How angry he’d been when he was young. _I wanted to, but I didn’t._ Did it make him bad to have wanted to, though? He needed some coffee. He kept needing coffee. Arya kept asking him questions he didn’t think about normally. Maybe that’s what happened when people cared about you—they reminded you of how awful you truly were.

Arya gave him an approving look. “Good,” she said. “I…I don’t take well to bullies.”

“I can bet,” he said. “With…” he looked at her. “You really don’t look like a horse at all.”

Arya laughed. “Didn’t stop Jeyne Poole from neighing at me.”

“I hope you hit her.”

“The one time I tried she went and tattled and I got into trouble,” Arya sighed. Then her eyes grew serious. “It’s sad—I can’t even hate her properly. Both she and Sansa…they both ended up with men they shouldn’t have. Is it supposed to make me feel better that they ended up hurting? Because it doesn’t, really.”

“Your sister…” Gendry began and Arya’s face went hard, and she shook her head.

“Look, I don’t want to talk about Sansa, all right?” she said.

“Yep,” Gendry said quickly. He could understand not wanting to talk about sisters. How many times over the years had he sidestepped Bella?

She sighed. “I hope Aemma finds friends. It makes all the difference in the world.”

“Yeah,” Gendry agreed. “I hope so too.”

“Did you make friends?” Arya asked him. “Big bloke like you, to stave off the bullies?”

Gendry shook his head. “I was a black cloud of rage. No one really wanted to mess with me, but no one wanted to be my friend either.” He felt his throat constrict. He didn’t like that. He didn’t want her to hear it. “I dunno. I’ve never had many friends. I think I’m too much of a grouch. Cats are as good as people anyhow. Fluffier and whatnot.”

“Oh,” Arya said, and a moment later, he felt her hand on his arm. He looked down at it, then over at her. Her eyes were soft, and for a moment, he thought she was going to hug him the way she’d hugged Aemma. She didn’t though. “Well, we’re friends now,” she said. “Better late than never.”

He smiled at her. “Yeah,” he agreed. “Yeah. Friends.”


	9. Chapter 9

Friends.

Gendry could laugh.

Friends didn’t notice the way that _friends_ looked right when they came out of the bathtub with a towel wrapped around their torso.

Friends didn’t notice the curve of her waist as she cooked dinner, or the way that her breasts—small, but god why was he noticing?—pushed together when she scooped up a cat to cuddle in her arms for a few seconds.

Friends didn’t notice that.

And Gendry did.

He was the worst person alive. He’d known that for years now. And this—this only went to prove it.

* * *

Sevens’ kittens were born without any trouble—four of them with white fur and closed eyes—and Gendry was glad to have coffee because even with Sevens there to take care of them, he still found himself taking care of the kittens at all hours of the night, or driving back from work at lunch to make sure that they didn’t need anything in the box he’d filled with blankets to keep them and Sevens warm in the laundry room.

And he’d thought Swampy Meg was small when he’d found her. These things were tiny—barely the length of one of his fingers and they squeaked more than they meowed. Sevens looked thoroughly pleased with herself as she fed them and cleaned them and slept with them—when she didn’t look as exhausted as Gendry felt, at least.

Arya helped. And he was very glad of her help, because she knew more about cats than he could ever fathom knowing. It was nice, sitting on the floor of the laundry room with her, watching as she massaged the stomach of one of the kittens, or held one between her hands to keep it warm while Sevens was away from the box. She always looked so happy looking over the kittens, her grey eyes twinkling, and Gendry wished he didn’t notice how they twinkled, or the way that the kittens fit between her hands when she held them.

“You’re going to have to name them,” she said to him one day, but Gendry shook his head.

“I’m not keeping them,” he insisted. “I refuse. I don’t care how much Sevens loves them. I’m not. So I can’t name them. That’s for whoever owns them to do.”

Arya gave him a look.

“What?”

“You’re going to have these ones until they’re old and grey and you know it.”

“Am not,” Gendry grumbled.

“Put your money where your mouth is,” Arya shrugged.

“Watch me. No more cats.”

“At least until some poor starving wretch ends up in your backyard.”

“Shut up.”

Arya gave him a cheeky grin and his stomach lurched and he occupied himself with a kitten so as not to let himself think about her. He shouldn’t get attached besides. She shouldn’t be here for much longer anyway.   Once she’d recovered a little more, she’d be gone and he’d be alone with his cats again.

* * *

Arya was sitting in the waiting room, flipping through the latest issue of _Dogs Today_. There had been a huge fluffy mastiff on the cover that hadn’t looked so much like Nymeria as Shaggydog, but she couldn’t not look at it, especially since she didn’t have anything to do.

The clinic was quiet tonight—no dogs hit by cars in the darkness, not cats that had eaten something, no bunnies who had gotten out of their cages and been bitten by something. Quiet and calm. Arya wondered if it was ever this calm during the day.

Part of her missed clinical work. Or rather—regular clinical work. More than just the emergency volunteering she did. She missed chatting with owners and petting dogs that were there for checkups and nothing more. The wolves were good, but…

No, she would think about that later. When things were more settled. She’d always have time to go back to clinical work if she wanted. When she wanted. And she knew she would. Because she did.

Daena was on her phone behind the desk, tapping away at the screen fervently. “Who are you texting?” Arya asked.

Daena looked up at her, unable to quite hide the look of surprise on her face. Arya had volunteered here for nearly two years, and not once had she ever asked Daena a question. She hadn’t really felt able to. But she was bored tonight, and maybe looking at pictures of young mastiffs frolicking in the sunshine had made her remember what it was like to be young and happy and alive.

“My boyfriend,” Daena said.

“What’s his name?” Arya asked him.

Daena hid her surprise better this time. “Aron,” she said. “We’ve been dating about six months,” she adds, heading off Arya’s next question.

“That’s nice,” Arya said. “How’d you meet?”

“My sister set us up,” Daena said. She gave Arya a smile.

“That’s good of her,” Arya grinned, not letting herself think about what might happen if Sansa tried to set her up with someone. Jon would be better, she thought. Jon always knew her best, even if he hadn’t been in the same place as her since he was sixteen. She wondered if that was still true, though. She hardly knew herself anymore.

“Yeah. She and I have always been close, but never’ve had the same taste in men,” Daena said, smiling. “So when Aron was nice, but not her type, she sent him my way.”

“Glad it worked out,” Arya said, smiling.

They settled into another silence and Arya glanced down at the magazine on her lap. There was a pug puppy sitting in a pile of towels the way that Ravella always did and she felt her heart melt just looking at it. _I like cats_ , she thought, _But I want a dog._ It felt too soon to think that, though. Too soon. Nymeria had been part of her life since she was only a little girl, and now she was gone. She needed to mourn her properly.

A niggling voice in the back of her head said _as much as Mycah? So much you lose yourself?_ If anyone wouldn’t want that, it would be Nymeria. Nymeria would want her to have a puppy. Insomuch as dogs could want something like that. _Besides…_ maybe it was staying with Gendry, but she felt less adrift than she should have after Nymeria died. It was oddly confusing.

Her phone buzzed and she stared at it in complete shock. She saw Daena look up from the counter to stare as well.

_Gendry: You free? Cat problem._

Arya picked up the phone and called him.

“Is this what I am? A way for you to avoid clinic fees?” she teased when he answered.

“No. The car won’t start again. Battery’s dead, and I can’t tell if Huntsman’s all right and I can wait for you to get back to jump the car, or if I should call a cab or something.”

“What happened to Huntsman?”

“Fell off a bookshelf,” Gendry said, “the really tall one in the living room. I don’t know how he got on top of it, and I’m surprised he didn’t do that magic twisty thing where cats land on their feet. But he didn’t and he started yowling.”

“Is he moving at all?” Arya asked quickly. She could see Hunstman now, a great fluffy thing that was bigger than all of the other cats except Watty, but Watty’s bulk was fat and Huntsman’s was size.

“His tail’s twitching,” Gendry said. “I can’t tell about his legs.”

“Bring him in. Try not to move him too much. Put a cardboard thing under him and tie him to it if you can and if he’ll play along. If there’s spinal damage it might be made worse by moving him.”

“Like with people,” Gendry said dryly.

“Yes. You should get one of those portable jump-starters, by the way. The kind they keep in garages.”

“I really should just get a new car. See you in some,” Gendry sighed, and a moment later the line went dead.

“Who was that,” Daena asked, curiosity clearly dripping from her voice, and thinking that, now that Arya had broken the two-year ice between them, that she could ask as she liked.

“Gendry Smith,” Arya said.

“Cat man?” Daena was clearly surprised by this.

“Yeah, he’s a friend of mine,” Arya said evasively. She had a feeling that if she said that she was staying at his house for a while Daena’s head would positively explode. “One of his cats had a fall.” She bit her lip. If Huntsman wasn’t moving…if he’d broken his spine…it might be better to put the poor thing down. She didn’t like thinking about that. Especially not after Nymeria.

“Oh dear. Not Lem, I hope. Though that might make his life easier. That cat’s trouble.”

Arya shook his head. “I don’t know if he’s ever brought Huntsman in,” she said. “He’s a huge brown thing.”

“Maybe for check-ups but not at nights,” Daena said, shrugging. Then, clearly because the curiosity was getting the better of her, “Please don’t tell me you became friends because of all of his cats.”

“It’d be sort of a lie to say no,” Arya said, watching in almost amused as Daena’s face became a riot of reactions.

“That’s hilarious,” Daena muttered. “Bloody hilarious.”

Arya shrugged. She did see the humor in it, but it didn’t feel that funny to her. She wondered what she’d be like if it weren’t for Gendry and his million cats. _I’d be a mess still._ She thought of her house, empty now, and Nymeria’s empty dog bed. She shuddered, and stretched, then tugged her sweatshirt back down her arms, her wrist scraping against her engagement ring. She looked at it.

 _I should take it off_.

Where had that thought come from? She hated herself for it, for even thinking it. That ring was Mycah, and just because Mycah was gone didn’t mean she didn’t still love him, wasn’t still his.

Twenty minutes later, Gendry appeared, carefully carrying Huntsman on a board. The cat was still yowling, and his eyes were rolling in pain and fear.

“Ok, little man,” she said gently to him, running her hands over his shoulders. He hissed at her.

“Oy,” Gendry said firmly. “Don’t do that. She’s trying to help.”

“He’s frightened,” Arya said. “It’s ok, Huntsman. It’s ok.” She ran her hands along his front paws and he tried to pull them away from her. _Good_ , she thought. Then she went for his back paws. They didn’t move. They hung limply in her hands.

 _He probably broke part of his spine_ , she thought sadly, thinking of Bran. “I think we’ll have to admit him, do some x-rays. His front legs seem to be ok, but he might have lost the use of his back legs, and I don’t know if other functions are damaged,” she said, looking at Gendry. There were dark circles under his eyes, and he looked almost as upset as the cat on the table. _He needs coffee_ , she thought. She reached out and patted him on the arm. “I think he’ll be ok. Worse comes to worst, we’ll have to have him outfitted with some sort of wheel thing. He’s a big enough guy that he might be able to drag his legs along happily. It’ll depend what the damage is.”

Gendry nodded.

“I feel like a bad dad,” he said.

“You’re not,” Arya said firmly. “Huntsman had hubris if he was climbing that high.” Huntsman was still yowling. “I’m going to sedate him and leave it for Doctor Rivers to sort out when he gets in. Is that all right?”

Gendry nodded. Arya went to the refrigerator and found a sedative that would knock Huntsman out nice and fast, then injected it into the still yowling cat.

Gendry was leaning against the wall, looking haggard.

“Did you get any sleep?” Arya asked him.

“Yeah, about two hours worth. I don’t know if I’ll be able to go back to sleep.” He sighed and rubbed his face. “Thanks,” he added, glancing at Huntsman who was already sinking into unconsciousness.

Arya gave him a quick hug, then turned back to the cat. She picked up the board and brought it into the back room, finding a big enough cage to settle him in. When she came out, Gendry was paying Daena. He waved to her and said, “See you later,” and then was gone.

Daena looked between them. “You really are friends,” she said, almost disbelievingly.

“Yeah,” Arya said. _Friends_ , she thought. How long had it been since she had friends? It felt like ages. There was a time when she’d make friends with anyone. _That was me before_ , she thought sadly. But she missed it. She missed the time when she wouldn’t have bothered with the magazine but would have chatted the night away with Daena, or would have fielded texts back and forth with her classmates, or…

 _You didn’t even let yourself make friends here until Gendry,_ she thought. _You wanted to be miserable._

She had, hadn’t she? Wanted to be miserable, thought she deserved it somehow. _I didn’t though. No one deserves to be miserable._ She thought of her father, and the way he had held her close when she’d been crying over Jeyne’s neighing, and her mother…

How strange it was, that when she thought of her mother she immediately thought of Mycah. She never thought of her mother’s death without Mycah’s, though Mycah had been with her at her mother’s funeral, had kissed her temple, had gotten into a fight with Joffrey, had held Jon’s Lya in his arms and looked at Arya with quiet hope in his eyes. She couldn’t think of her mother being dead without thinking of Mycah alive, then Mycah dead. Her mother who had pursed her lips whenever Arya had talked about vet school because she’d thought that it was beneath a daughter of Winterfell, who had done her best not to make disparaging comments about how Mycah was a butcher’s boy but who hadn’t been quite able to keep a frustrated classism out of her voice when she’d congratulated Arya on her engagement. _She loved me, though. She did want me happy. She just didn’t know how I could be happy this way._

_She was right._

Not the way that she’d thought though. Lady Catelyn hadn’t been right, all while being right. She’d thought that Arya would regret it all one day, that she was sinking beneath her station, that she could aspire for higher and more than she did, and that one day she’d wake up and realize she’d boxed herself into one giant mistake.

She hadn’t thought that that mistake would be just what it was though. A house in the riverlands haunted by Mycah and the ghost of the children they’d never had. _And Nymeria too._

She pulled up the text screen to Gendry and was about to type _I need to sell my house_ when she paused.

He was stressed out. He was—and hadn’t had coffee yet. She couldn’t put her demons on him, not like that, not when he was scared and sad about Huntsman.

 _I’ll tell him later_ , she thought.

And she would. She knew she would.

* * *

 

They fit Huntsman with a set of wheels for his back legs, which he didn’t like particularly.

“He’s a macho man and likes dragging his legs about,” Gendry said, gesturing at the cat with a spoon as he talked to Jeyne.

“Send me a picture?” Jeyne asked, and Gendry took one and texted it too her. “That’s hilarious. Sad, but hilarious. Do the other cats accommodate him?”

“Sometimes,” Gendry said. “Watty and Mudge still don’t let anyone on the bed, but the others seem to be good to him.”

“Watty and Mudge didn’t even let _me_ on the bed,” Jeyne whined at the same time that Arya said from the kitchen, “Those are still affronted that I’ve invaded their bed.”

Gendry snorted. “You two should start a support group. Watty and Mudge don’t let me sleep with them.”

“Ravella would totally curl up with me if those two buttheads didn’t get hissy at her,” Arya said while Jeyne asked, “They don’t like Arya either?”

“They like Arya fine,” Gendry said to Jeyne. “But not when they want to sleep on the bed and she’s there.”

Arya winked at him and his stomach did a thing. _Don’t_ , he thought at it. _Don’t do that. She’s your friend and your roommate, if only for the time being. You’re no good for her besides._

He changes the subject. “Have you heard from Willow lately?”

“Just that she’s saving up for her trip over the winter festival. Why?”

“You know who’s going with her?” Gendry asked.

Jeyne sighed. “Don’t let me think about it,” she sighed.

“Yeah, but—”

“No but Willow’s not stupid. She won’t get with him again. And I can’t stress myself out worrying about it more than I already am.”

“I can,” Gendry growled.

“Yeah, but your life’s steady right now and everything’s in the air for me. The bank wants me to refinance my mortgage and I’m just sitting here freaking out because sure our reviews were good, but we should have more bookings for the holidays and I am tearing my hair out, Gendry. Have a little faith in Willow. I have to right now, or I don’t know what I’ll do with myself.” Gendry frowned. There was something in her tone that was all too familiar.

“Jeyne—are you—?”

“I’m fine.” She was trying to sound firm, but there it was again, that tone. “I’ll be fine. I just can’t take more, all right?”

“Yeah. Yeah, all right.” He couldn’t think of what else to say.

“Everything ok?” Arya asked him as she spooned lasagna onto his plate.

Gendry sighed. “The sisters,” he said.

Arya cocked her head, waiting for him to go on, and he wondered for a moment if she’d gotten the gesture from Nymeria.

“Willow’s going on this trip to the Summer Isles and her shitbag abusive ex is going on the trip with her.” Arya inhaled sharply. “And she’s not stupid, she knows what he is, but I don’t want him near her, you know?”

“Absolutely,” Arya said darkly, and he remembered what she’d said about how Sansa was dating someone bad. He wanted to ask, but knew better than to bring it up.

“And Jeyne’s stressed out about the inn, and…” his voice trailed away. He couldn’t tell her. He couldn’t. It was Jeyne’s secret, not his. He didn’t tell anyone his own secrets, he certainly wasn’t going to tell Jeyne’s, even if Arya wasn’t going to tell a soul, which he somehow knew she wouldn’t. _Besides,_ he thought, _it’s a hint in her voice. That doesn’t mean she’s using again._ How many years had it taken to get her off it? He’d never stopped being amazed at how she’d been able to pull it all together again. She wouldn’t blow that on blow. She wouldn’t. Even if she thought she might. She was stronger than that.

“And?” Arya prompted.

“And I dunno, it’s stressful and I worry about her when she’s stressed,” he said.

Arya nodded knowingly. “She knows you’re there for her, though.”

“Yeah,” Gendry sighed. “Yeah, she does.” Would she tell him, though? No—he’d be the last person she’d tell.

Fuck he was worried about them. He hated watching as their lives fell apart and he could only do so much to help them. He hated that they had so much trouble keeping it together. _The system failed them_ , he thought again.

At least Bella seemed to be holding it down, if her Codex pictures were anything to judge by—arms around her Addam and their babies. _No thanks to everyone else. No thanks to me._

He felt useless.

“Coffee?” Arya asked him. There was something in her eyes.

Her eyes had seemed more alert lately. Maybe he was imagining it. _Getting out of that house was a good thing_ , he thought, accepting the mug from her and taking a sip.

Like magic, the warmth of it spread through his body and he felt everything calm down.

He was helpful. He wasn’t toxic. Jeyne and Willow _were_ better off. And Arya too.

“You spoken to your brothers lately?” he asked her.

And those alert eyes went defensive as she looked down at her plate. “No,” she said.

“So they don’t know you’re not in your house anymore?”

“I keep meaning to text Jon, but…”

“But?” Gendry prodded. Pushing her made him think less about his selfish self. Damn, he needed more coffee. He shouldn’t let himself talk yet.

“But…I dunno. It’s hard. I have…I just…” She took a deep breath. “I feel disconnected, is all. Like I don’t know what to say, or how. Like so much has happened and…”

“They’d want to know,” Gendry said.

“I know, but I can’t burden them.”

“How would it be a burden?” Gendry asked.

“After my mum died, I couldn’t layer my grief on top of theirs. Not with…with everything?”

“Everything?”

She gave him an annoyed look. “Will you let it rest?”

“Probably not.”

“Why not?”

“Because helping you distracts me from my own problems.”

“I’m not some project for you to save,” she snapped at him and it was like when he’d seen her house for the first time.

“So you don’t want my help?” Gendry asked her, and Arya stiffened. He watched her eyes flicker between his, watched conflictedness in the grey.

“You’re my friend,” she said slowly. “But…”

“But what? Do you like not talking to your brothers?”

“No,” she flared. “I hate it.”

“So talk to them.”

“It’s not that simple!”

“Everything?” Gendry prompted again, and in her anger the words came bubbling forward.

“Bran loved her, and the minute she died it was like his world came crashing down around him. Robb suddenly had to run Winterfell all on his own, and Rickon was like a lost child. And I tried to help them and then I couldn’t. And if I’d suddenly turned that on their heads, Bran would have dropped out of school, Robb would have struggled running the castle, and Rickon would have…I don’t know. And Jon had just had his baby.”

“What’s that got to do with now? Your mum’s been dead for two years.”

Arya glared at him. He knew the words were harsh, but they were true. They were definitely true. “They’ll see that they failed me and that’ll hurt them.”

“They did fail you,” Gendry said simply. “That doesn’t mean they wanted to, or that they’re bad, but you were sleeping on your dog bed in your living room for two years. And they weren’t there for you. You didn’t let them be. Keeping your problems away from other people is sometimes just as damaging as sharing them too much.” _And I would know._ “But do you think they’ll be mad at you for that?”

Arya was thinking hard. She clearly didn’t think this was where the conversation was going to go while she’d been making dinner.

“Don’t take your powerlessness over your sisters out on me,” she said quietly. “It’s not fair and it’s not kind.”

Gendry froze, staring at her.

“What do you think I should do?” she asked at last, still quiet, but he could practically see the wall—bigger even than the legendary one way to the north—between her and him that had somehow risen in the past few minutes.

“Visit your brothers,” Gendry said. “I don’t know. Leave this town. You have so many bad memories here. Start somewhere fresh. Let yourself be who you want to be.”

“Don’t you want me around?” Arya asked.

 _More than anything_.

_You’re the worst person in the world, Gendry Smith._

“Yeah, but what I want’s not important,” he said. “Or rather…I want you to be happy. And not talking to your brothers makes you miserable. Buy a ticket to the Wall and go see Jon. Stay up there a while. If you like it, don’t come back. You don’t need to be here if it makes you miserable. I think that’s what I was trying to say before I got mad.”

Arya chewed her lip. “I need to sell my house,” she said. “I thought about it a few days ago. I don’t know how to put it on the market. Mycah always took care of that.”

“I know some people who can help,” Gendry said. Arya nodded.

They ate in silence for a moment, and when their plates were nearly empty, Arya spoke.

“When you said…when you said helping me distracts you from your own problems…you meant more than Willow and Jeyne, didn’t you.”

Gendry looked up sharply. _Yes_ , he thought. But he couldn’t say that. He should, but he couldn’t. He sighed.

“You can tell me, you know,” Arya said. “That’s…that’s what friends are. People who help. Remember?”

“You don’t want to know,” Gendry sighed.

“Keeping your problems away from other people is sometimes just as damaging as sharing them too much,” she parroted at him, and he heard steel in her voice. _Stubborn_ , he thought. _Her own damn stubbornness got her into this though._

_So did yours, you bastard._

His lips twitched towards a smile.

“There are just things about how I am is all,” he said evasively. “Stubborn, selfish, controlling, you know.”

Arya raised her eyebrows ever so slightly. “Is that what you think of yourself?” she asked. “Like none of the good?”

Gendry smiled. “The good’s not near enough to hide the nasty.”

“Maybe to you,” she said. “Mycah used to say that the only person who never sees you fully is yourself. You’re too close, and you only see the mirror sometimes. Things get distorted. You focus on the wrong stuff.”

“What do you see, then?” Gendry asked.

“Someone who helped me,” she said quietly. “Who is still helping me. Though what you’re getting out of it I don’t know. Someone who puts on a big macho front with all his weights and muscles, but owns twelve cats and brings them into the emergency clinic the second something’s wrong instead of waiting for daylight. Someone who gets mad when people are in pain. Someone who gets mad at himself when he’s in pain and can’t do anything about it.”

“Where’d you get that last bit?” Gendry asked.

Arya blinked at him. “Just came out. But I think it’s true.”

He ran his fingers over the edge of the table, feeling the grooves in the wood.

“It’s hard when the pain’s from when you’re just a kid, you know,” he sighed. “Like…mum dying, and being bounced from place to place because you aren’t wanted and nothing you do is ok and you shouldn’t fucking exist. It’s hard when that hits you sometimes.”

Arya leaned forward and he wished he didn’t notice the way her cleavage looked under her v-neck as she did it. _You’re awful. Stop it._ She took his hand, and it was soft, and warm. She didn’t say a word, she just held his hand and looked at him, and he’d always heard that grey was a cold color—like metal. But right now it was soft—softer than Melly’s fur and he let himself sink into it for a moment. He closed his eyes, and let himself be for just a moment.

* * *

Arya sent Jon an email that night while curled up in the corner of the bed that Watty and Mudge allowed her.

_Dear Jon,_ (how strange, writing “dear Jon” as though she barely knew him.) _I was wondering if I could come up and visit sometime soon. I have some vacation days to use up and I haven’t seen you in ages, and want to see how Lya’s grown._

_Let me know._

_Love,_

_Arya_

She wanted to say more. She did. She really did. Wanted to tell him how the world had fallen apart, but that she was slowly pulling it back together. But that was hard to write. And she’d see him soon.

The response came ten minutes later.

_Yes. Come whenever you like for however long you like. Can’t wait to see you little sister. It’s been much too long._

She felt tears spring to her eyes as she stared at the screen on her phone, then went and looked at train times and began to plan.


	10. Chapter 10

“I mean it,” Gendry said as he dropped her off at the train station at the Crossroads, “If it feels right, stay there as long as you want. Hell, if you decide to move up there to be near your brother, I’ll help you sort out your stuff down here.”

Arya felt her stomach lurch. Jon. She was really going to see Jon. And he would be waiting for her at the train station at Castle Black, and she’d see little Lya again, who she hadn’t seen since her mother’s funeral, and she’d be with Jon.

She fixed her ponytail and gave Gendry a quick hug, and then got on the escalator down to the platform, waving as it took her away. Right before she disappeared, she thought she saw something in his eyes go sad. _I mean it_ , she heard him say again in her head. _Go, if it’s what’s best for you._ But it made him sad to say that.

For all he talked about liking being on his own, and not having a roommate, she was pretty sure he was lying. She knew plenty of people who said they liked being on their own, but really they were just afraid of people not caring. _But people do care about Gendry. Jeyne and Willow and the kids he works with. And me. I care about Gendry._

She didn’t like the idea of him being sad. Not even a little, not when even now she felt more like she’d been…when? She’d never really felt like this. She couldn’t say it was how she’d felt before she’d met Mycah, even, because it didn’t. She was older now, and couldn’t un-be who she’d been for the past few years, but she wasn’t sure she felt like that now. Not numb, or lonely or constantly, endlessly, ceaselessly sad. There was that ache—her mother gone, and Mycah, but it felt more like her father than…well it didn’t. She didn’t know what it felt like.

She had her ticket stamped at the machine on the platform, then sat down and before too long, the train was whizzing its way north.

North, and the countryside grew wilder with every passing moment as the train shot past Moat Cailin. She saw familiar signposts on the Kingsroad in the distance, and strained her eyes for a glimpse of Winterfell in the distance when they approached the stop at Winter Town towards sunset.

She pulled out her cell phone and sent Bran a text.

_Passing Winterfell on my way to see Jon. You should come up and see me._

The response was instantaneous.

_Why Jon and not me? I miss you._

_I miss you too. Soon, I promise. Come north!_

_Over midwinter? You’ve got to be kidding. I’m not as crazy as you. :-P_

_Give Robb and Rickon my love._

_Obvi. Come by on your way home!_

_I’ll try. I only took a few vacation days and I don’t want to cut short my trip on Jon._

_He’d understand._

_Yes, but Lya might not._

_Gods she’s a terror. Worse than Rickon at her age._

_Oh gods._

_Good luck._

She sent Jon a text as well.

_Passing Winterfell._

_C u soon._

_Since when have you used chatspeak?_

_Driving rn. The cops’ll be up my ass._

_Watch your language. And you, a father._

_F u._

Part of her wanted to send a text to Gendry. But she didn’t know what she’d say, so she didn’t in the end.

* * *

She heard him before she saw him.

“Well aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?” And there were arms around her waist, lifting her in the air and she wriggled around enough to see the top of Jon’s head.

“You would be too if you let me see you,” Arya said, and a moment later, her feet were back on the ground and her face was buried in Jon’s neck as he hugged her so tightly she could barely breathe. “Hello,” she gasped.

“Hello little sister,” he said happily, running a hand through her hair and mussing her ponytail.

At last he stepped back and she could get a look at him. His face was just as long as before, but there was a beard growing on his face. It made him look like her father. There were dark circles under his eyes as well. She reached up and touched those.

“Hey, be careful,” he teased, “Lya’s worked hard to put those there.” His smile slipped slightly as he ran fingers over the dark circles under her own eyes. “What are these?”

She shrugged. “Living with a coffee addict,” she shrugged, and heard Gendry’s voice in her head again. “Also some other stuff.”

“Other stuff?” Jon asked, his face growing serious.

“Hello!” came another voice and Arya turned and saw Ygritte standing there in a heavy tan coat, her red curls popping out in all directions. Arya saw a small set of hands behind resting on Ygritte’s legs, and the hood of a parka with furry lining poking around curiously.

Arya stepped towards Ygritte and kissed her cheek. “It’s good to see you,” she said quietly.

“And you,” Ygritte grinned. “Lya hasn’t stopped asking when you’d get here.” She gave Arya a significant look.

“Where’s Lya?” Arya said, exaggerating her every word. “I don’t see her anywhere.”

She heard Jon snort behind her. “I don’t know,” he said. “Ygritte, you didn’t lose her, did you?”

“Where is she?” Ygritte asked. “Where’s Lya? Did you leave her in the car, Jon?”

“No!” came a small voice and a moment later, a tiny body encased in a thick grey coat pelted out from behind Ygritte’s legs. “I’m _here!_ ” she said loudly.

“There you are!” Arya said crouching down and picking her up in the air. “My little godsdaughter! Grown so big.”

The girl had curly hair like Ygritte’s, but it was black like Jon’s. Her face wasn’t long like Jon’s, and she had Ygritte’s gap between her front teeth, but her eyes were like Arya’s.

Arya rested Lya on her hip, and then pressed a kiss to her cheek, a mix of the girl’s hair and the lining of her parka rubbing her face. “So big! The last time I saw you, you were so tiny I could hold you in one hand.”

“Was not,” Lya said.

“Were too. I remember. I held you in one hand,” Arya insisted.

“No!” Lya said.

“Alright,” Jon said in a voice that made Arya’s hair stand on end because he sounded just like dad. “Don’t be rude to your aunt.”

“I wasn’t though!” Lya insisted.

“Lya.”

“Sorry,” the girl mumbled, and Arya kissed her cheek again.

“Shall we get to the car? I don’t want to have to pay for parking,” Ygritte said, and Jon nodded. Arya turned around, looking for her suitcase, and saw that Jon had already thrown it over his shoulder. She followed them towards the parking lot, her arms still around Lya on her hip and Jon’s free hand coming to rest at the small of Ygritte’s back.

It was pitch black outside, and cold as fuck, and Arya shuddered slightly in her coat.

“Are you cold?” Lya asked.

“No,” Arya lied.

“You’re shivering.”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

“Lya!” Ygritte called, standing next to an open car door. Arya handed Lya to her mother and Ygritte fastened her into her car seat while Jon slammed the trunk shut and darted to the front of the car, sliding into the driver’s seat before Ygritte could get there.

Ygritte stuck her tongue out at him. “I can drive, you know,” she snapped at him.

“Yes,” he agreed, buckling himself in. Ygritte rolled her eyes at Arya, who grinned.

Jon’s house was a small thing, one of the ice apartments that had been carved into one of the non-protected areas of the Wall. For all it was literally carved into the living ice, it was warmer than Arya would have thought.

“I want to show you your room,” Lya insisted the moment they stepped out of the elevator, running towards the apartment door.

“Don’t run too fast,” Jon called. “You’ll fall.”

“Won’t!” Lya insisted.

Jon unlocked the door, and Lya grabbed at Arya’s hand and a moment later, Arya was being dragged inside. “You’re staying in the baby room,” Lya said.

“Oh? Is it small?”

“No, stupid, it’s for the baby.”

“For the—” Arya began as Ygritte said, “Lya—language.”

“Well, it _is_ stupid. I _told_ her it was the baby room.”

Ygritte gave Arya a look, then glanced at Jon, who was following with Arya’s suitcase. “We’re having another baby,” she said.

Arya felt her mouth drop open in surprise. “Really? When?”

“Springtime,” Ygritte said.

“Congratulations!” she said, stepping forward to give Ygritte a hug, and Jon a kiss on the cheek.

“Thanks,” Jon grinned. “It’s…We’ll talk more when she’s asleep,” he said, glancing at Lya who was already tugging at Arya’s coat.

“Speaking of,” Ygritte said. “Bath time, you. Then bed.”

“But—”

“Ah, ah, ah. I said you could come along to fetch Aunt Arya _if_ you didn’t give me trouble about staying up past your bedtime when she got here. So bath, and bed.”

“You’ll see more of me tomorrow,” Arya said, even as Lya’s eyes welled with tears.

“No!” she whined. “I don’t want to go to bed!”

“Stop it, Lya,” Jon said firmly. “Go with your mom. Bath time.”

“I don’t _want_ to! I’m _clean_!”

“Lya.”

Ygritte picked her up and the girl burst into plaintive tears.

“None of that now,” Ygritte said. “Come on. None of that.”

“But mama! I don’t want to!”

Ygritte kicked the door to the bathroom shut behind her and Arya heard Lya continue to cry.

“They say twos are terrible, Lya’s recently decided to try crying to get her way,” he sighed. He set Arya’s bag down. “Sorry it might be a few minutes before you can shower.”

“That’s fine,” Arya said. “Another baby—Jon, that’s great.”

He smiled and closed the door behind her. “Yeah, it was a bit of a surprise. Like…yeah, we knew we wanted another one, but weren’t sure now was the best time.” Jon flushed before quickly pressing on. “Work’s stressful for both of us, and Lya’s…well, she’s great when she’s great and there are times when I want to tug my hair out, and dealing with her like she is _and_ a newborn… You were _never_ this bad, but maybe if you’d been the oldest…She only ever wants to be like you, you know. She sees pictures of you and hears stories about you when you were little,” he grinned at her. “It’s handy, actually, for making sure she does what we want. ‘You’ll be like Aunt Arya if you brush your teeth.’”

Arya felt a pang in her chest. “So long as you don’t use me when she’s being bad so she’s not disappointed,” she said, remembering all of her mother’s exasperated shouts of “ _your sister never caused this much trouble.”_

“No,” Jon said firmly. “No.” He gave her a look, and it had been so long since she’d seen that look—that _I know exactly what you’re thinking about and I love you_ look that only Jon could really manage.

He sighed. “Anyway. Apparently there was a night where…things weren’t quite in place and well…there we are.” His ears turned a bit red, and a moment later he was plowing on. “Too early to tell if it’s a boy or a girl and I’m dreading twins, which apparently run in Ygritte’s family, because sure, public education, but still—feeding five people on my salary…”

He shook his head, but for all his words seemed unsure, his face was excited, and his excitement was infectious.

“Jon, I can see you with twelve kids.”

“Don’t say that around Ygritte. She’s already muttering about my magical and aggressive sperm.”

Arya snorted and sat down on the bed—devoid of cat hair, or dog hair or any sort of animal hair.

“No replacement Ghost?” she asked.

“Lya’s more than enough replacement for any dog,” Jon said dryly. “But no. Not yet. I want one, but Ygritte thinks that we can’t live in this apartment and have a dog, and I think she is right. How’s Nymeria?”

Arya felt her throat tighten. “She died. A few months ago.”  Jon's eyes flickered.  

“She was a good dog,” Jon said sadly, watching her closely. “You ok?”

Arya nodded, feeling her eyes prickle. “Better,” she said, and took a breath. “Better than I thought I’d be, all things considered.”

“All things considered? And what was that ‘other stuff’ you mentioned?”

Arya chewed her lip.

“Come on, Arya,” Jon prodded.

“I’ve had a hard few years. After Mycah and mom.”

Jon crossed the room and sat down on the bed next to her, wrapping his arms around her, while she sat there breathing hard and trying to force those prickles in her eyes to just stay prickles. “It’s…it’s like I wasn’t myself, or something. I don’t know. Depression. Grief. Whatever you want to call it.” She swallowed. Jon was watching her closely, rubbing his bearded chin with one hand. “It was hard. And I’m…I’m sort of coming out of it.”

Jon nodded. “Are you really? Or are you just saying that?”

Arya chanced a smile when she looked at him. “A few months ago I think I might have just been saying it. But now…”

Jon grimaced, then hugged her close. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“I didn’t feel myself,” she muttered. “I didn’t know how to say that and not be a burden. I don’t—”

“You are never a burden.” Jon kissed her cheek. “You least of anyone, little sister.”

Arya closed her eyes and lost herself in the warmth of him for just a moment. She was really here, with Jon. And he wasn’t mad at her for not saying anything. Of course he wouldn’t be. He was _Jon_.

“I love you,” she blurted out.

“I love you too,” Jon said automatically and he squeezed her again. “And I’m glad you’re doing better.” He made a face. “I feel like I failed you, though.”

“You didn’t,” Arya said automatically.

“I should have known something was up. You’re never that quiet for that long.”

Arya swallowed and looked down at her hands. “Sorry,” she mumbled.

Jon sighed. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry about. I should have known. And I’m glad you’re doing better.”

“Me too,” she whispered, choosing to focus on that. It was like that woman she’d been in that house was a ghost, and she’d somehow pushed through it, and underneath, she’d still been Arya. Even if she didn’t have Mycah anymore.

She had Jon. She had her family. She had herself. _And Gendry_. _I have Gendry too._

* * *

 

She woke to the sound of footsteps outside her door, and a hissed, “Lya, she’ll come out when she’s awake. Get away from there,” and she grinned to herself. There was no Watty or Mudge on this bed who climbed over her to remind her that it was _their_ bed and not hers, disrupting her sleep for all they were warm and fluffy. And no Ravella who always came over for a scratch when she woke up. But there _was_ someone who wanted to see her—a little, energetic, adorable someone.

“ _I can’t imagine having only one kid,_ ” she’d confessed to Mycah once. She’d had so many siblings she couldn’t even imagine raising a child to be all on its own. The memory didn’t make her hurt as much as it once might have.

She climbed out of bed and dug out a sweatshirt from her suitcase, then came out into the living room, which she’d barely seen when she had arrived the night before.

Lya was sitting on the floor with a set of Bricklets, building something that looked like a cross between a dragon and a moose. “Good morning,” she said, grinning over at Lya.

Lya’s eyes widened and she jumped to her feet, shattering the Bricklet moose thing and pelting towards Arya. “We’re going north of the Wall today!” she said excitedly. “Mom’s taking us north.”

“Oh?” Arya asked, glancing at the kitchen table where Ygritte was sitting. There was no sign of Jon, but he’d said he had to work today, and that maybe tonight they’d have dinner with some of his work friends.

“Yeah,” Lya said excitedly.

“You’ve never been, Jon said,” Ygritte said. “So I thought I’d take you to some of the quintessential spots, if you don’t mind sitting in a car for several hours and looking at wilderness.”

It turned out Arya didn’t mind that at all, especially while she was with Ygritte and Lya, who was describing everything in her life to Arya—her preschool classmates, her favorite foods, the places she wanted to go, the baby names she was thinking of, that she didn’t wet the bed anymore, that she couldn’t pick whether green or orange was her favorite color. Sometimes Ygritte would cast Arya a look out of the corner of her eye—one that was torn between an apology and a bit of pride, other times, she’d ask Lya to clarify something, or correct her child’s grammar.

The countryside was stunning—and blinding, the sun bouncing off the snow and into their eyes as they made their way along winding, narrow roads that took them through forests and past rivers that had been frozen over for months and months.

“You’ve never come this far north?” Ygritte asked her when Lya had talked herself into a brief nap.

“No,” Arya admitted. “I kept meaning to, but it never worked out for timing.” _And Mycah hated cold._

“Well, better late than never,” Ygritte said. “You southerners don’t know the meaning of cold, for all your Starkish ‘Winter is Coming’ nonsense.”

Arya almost protested the “you southerners,” but reminded herself she’d been in the riverlands since she was eighteen. More than a third of her life. And if that was the case, how much of her life had she been depressed the way she had been? Two years took up a long time.

“You should come south—to the _real_ south, I mean. Come see what winters are like when you only need to wear a fleece,” Arya teased.

“Gods forbid,” Ygritte shuddered. “That’s _springtime_ here.” She paused for a moment, then said, “Though I know Jon would very much like to visit you. Maybe after this thing’s born.”

“Spring you said?” Arya asked.

Ygritte nodded. “Gods, one night without a condom and…” she shook her head. “Sorry—is that TMI?”

“Jon hinted at it last night,” Arya said. “It’s a positive sex-ed ad.”

“Yeah,” sighed Ygritte. “I know. The irony is not wholly lost on me. I suppose at least it won’t _look_ like an accident baby the way Rickon does.”

That made Arya laugh. She’d never really thought of Rickon as an accident baby. She remembered her mother once telling her that she’d miscarried between Rickon and Bran, and warning her that the hormones had been hard. She wondered again how hard her father’s death had hit her mother, whether that had thrown her into grief and depression the way it had Arya. There was so much she’d never be able to ask her.

She glanced sideways and saw that Ygritte was watching her out of the corner of her eyes.

“You ok?” she asked, her voice serious.

Arya jerked a nod. She wondered if Jon had told Ygritte any of what she’d told him last night. She suspected that he had, given the way Ygritte was looking at her now.

“Better,” Arya said.

“That’s good,” Ygritte said. “Jon’s…well, he’s worried you’re hiding stuff from him. He feels bad not having noticed.”

“I’m good at hiding things,” Arya said. _Except when I’m not. Except when Gendry noticed right away._ But then again, Gendry had seen her and Jon hadn’t in years.

“All the same,” Ygritte said. “He loves you and wants to help.”

“I can’t have anyone magically fix my problems except me. Not even Jon. It’s a lot of work, and I need to do it.”

“Yeah, but it helps when there’s someone who loves you and knows how hard you’re working,” Ygritte said gently.

“That’s something I’ve been noticing,” Arya said, thinking of Gendry again, and how he’d just let her stay at his house and how his cats slept in her laundry and chased the light that bounced off her watch.

“Oh?” Ygritte asked.

“A friend of mine’s been really good lately,” Arya said. It felt weird telling Ygritte when she hadn’t even gotten around to telling Jon yet. “He’s helped a lot in the past few months.”

“I’m glad you’re not alone,” Ygritte said seriously.

“Me too,” Arya said.

* * *

If the last few years were some nightmare that Arya almost couldn’t believe had truly happened, the time she spent in Jon’s tiny apartment was a dream. She cooked, she took care of Lya, she laughed, she sat curled up next to Jon while his arm was thrown around her and they reminisced at length about silly things from her childhood—the way dad sang in the shower, or how Robb had never known how to take care of his curls and ended up with hair twice the size of his head for a good portion of his adolescence. She met Jon’s friends, a rowdy group of men who all seemed mystified by her existence—all except Sam, who had sisters of his own.

Jon took her on top of the Wall and she stared for a good long time in both directions, a scarf wrapped around her face to try and keep some of the wind at bay.

“You don’t get wind like this in the riverlands, do you?” Jon asked. He was standing behind her, wrapped in a huge black coat and Arya turned and smiled at him before remembering that he couldn’t see her face while she was wrapped in a scarf.

“Nope,” she said. “But it rains a lot.”

Jon laughed. “Gods, I don’t remember the last time it rained up here,” he said. “It mostly turns to snow, even in summer.” He shuddered. “Remember when dad used to say if we weren’t careful it would snow all year? Guess I’m not careful.”

“Yeah, well, from what I’ve gathered about you and condoms…” Arya teased and bumped Jon with her hip. He half-yelped, half-laughed and gave her a quick hug.

“Got me there,” he sighed. “Come on. Let’s go down before my face freezes off.”

Ygritte had taken Lya shopping for groceries, and so the apartment was quiet when they came back inside. Jon kicked up the heater a few notches before hanging up his coat and taking the one that he’d lent Arya from her.

“Ygritte always makes fun of me when I turn the heater up,” he said. “So make sure I put it down before she gets home.”

“Got it,” Arya said, grinning. “But, what does she expect? You’re living in an ice hole?”

Jon snorted. “Yeah, bit impractical, really, but better than having to pay for insulation in a stand-alone house. I hear the heating bills are ridiculous.”

“And ice isn’t?”

“Magic, I suppose. We must give thanks to Bran the Builder. Want a beer?”

“Always,” Arya said. Jon passed her one from the fridge and they sat down in the living room, and Arya downed her beer quickly.

“That was fast,” Jon laughed.

“It’s been a while since I’ve had beer,” she said, realizing it was true even as she said it. She’d not bought herself even a six-pack in ages because she didn’t know if it was ok to even bring alcohol into Gendry’s house.

“Did you quit and I just enabled you?” Jon asked. He had that tone he’d had some times, where he was trying to fish out information she might have kept from him over the past few years.

Arya shook her head. “Nah. The person I’m living with now is a recovering alcoholic, so I just don’t have any at home, and I don’t go to bars much,” she said.

“You’re living with someone?” Jon asked quickly.

“Yeah,” she said. “It just never came up,” she added quickly. “His name’s Gendry, and he’s my friend. He has nine thousand cats.”

“That’s a lot of cats,” Jon said.

“Yeah,” Arya grinned. “Not really a replacement for Nymeria, of course, but I like cats. They’re sneaky little things.”

“I think they’re out to get us all,” Jon said seriously.

“No, never,” she said, thinking of Ravella who sat on the edge of the bathtub looking concerned that Arya was willingly sitting in water, or of Harwin who was such a slut for belly rubs.

“How’d you meet this Gendry,” Jon asked.

“At the clinic I volunteer for,” Arya said. “His cats kept having trouble, so he’d keep bringing them in and we just sort of…” How had they struck up a friendship? Coffee. Gendry’s coffee addiction, and Lem eating plastic bags. She smiled. She hoped he was doing well while she was gone. She’d need to remember to text him later. She hadn’t since she’d gotten on the train, not even to say she’d gotten here safely.

“Ah,” Jon said. “How often do you volunteer?”

“Three nights a week,” she said. “It’s been good. Distracting,” she added.

“That doesn’t leave much time for sleep,” he said, reaching out and rubbing under Arya’s eyes again. The dark circles had been fading. She’d noticed that the other day after taking a shower. She’d been sleeping well here, for all Lya kept wanting to wake her up in the morning. In that regard she was not so different from the cats, or even Nymeria.

“No,” Arya said, “I…I wasn’t worried about that though. I needed to keep myself from…yeah.”

Jon was hugging her again. Arya continued. “Anyway, yeah. I met Gendry through the clinic, and he’s been the first real friend I’ve had since Mycah.”

Jon kissed her temple and she shifted, burrowing against his side a little more closely. “I like him already,” Jon said.

Arya smiled. She did think Jon would like Gendry, even if Gendry hadn’t had any coffee. But still, it meant the world that he’d say that.

“You shouldn’t have been left alone,” Jon muttered. “I should have come down to check on you. I just…”

“You’d just had Lya,” Arya said firmly, “It’s all right.”

“It’s not, really,” Jon responded, just as firmly. “You needed me and I wasn’t there.”

Arya bit her lip. She didn’t know what to say—that it didn’t surprise her, that Jon had always been far away, ever since her mum had sent him off to boarding school, that she couldn’t bring herself to bring him down from the high of parenthood, especially as she was mourning the future that she and Mycah had been beginning to plan?

“I got there in the end,” she said quietly. She had, after all. It had hurt, and had been the opposite of easy, but she’d done it.

“As I said, I like this Gendry already,” Jon said. “Any friend of yours…”

Their conversation was interrupted by the sound of footsteps outside the apartment door and Lya’s “Mama come _on!_ ”

“The thermostat—quick!” Arya said, poking Jon who leapt to his feet to lower the heat again while Arya laughed and went to the door to find her niece waiting for her, eyes bright with excitement.

* * *

Over the course of the two weeks that Arya visited Jon, Arya felt her chest expand. Light was less harsh against her eyes—though whether that was because there were about four hours of daylight this far north or because of something else, it was hard to say. She and Jon even took a train down to Winterfell for a day and a half and saw Bran and Rickon and Robb, who were thrilled to see them. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed them until she saw the three of them—all auburn hair and blue eyes—waiting for them by the train’s platform. She curled up by the fire and played games with Lya, reading her bedtime stories and helping calm her when she cried. She cooked with Jon and helped Ygritte sort through Lya’s old baby things to see what could be reused when their second child was born and what was too ragged and should just be thrown out. She ate with their friends, and went to the museum at Castle Black to see Jon at work, amusing herself poking her way through the old castle and wondering if there really had been a Long Night, or if that was just legend.

On her last night there, she and Jon drank their way through a six pack and ended up lying on the floor of the living room, as they had when they’d been kids—only slightly more tipsy.

“So what’s next for you?” Jon asked her, resting his hand on the top of her head.

Arya chewed her lip. “Gendry thinks that if I feel better up here, I should think about just staying. That it’s too drenched in bad down there for me to really ever feel ok.”

Jon didn’t make a sound, and Arya twisted up to look at him. He was staring at the ceiling, so she couldn’t see his face.

“Well,” he said slowly, “I don’t think that’s a bad idea. Maybe not here if it’s too cold and remote, but Winterfell…”

Arya imagined being at Winterfell, at home with Bran and Robb and Rickon, opening up her own practice maybe, or just striking out anew. How lovely it would be to be there—how perfect, how home. She’d have memories of her parents to keep her warm at night, and she’d get a new dog, another mastiff like Nymeria who she could raise from a pup, and maybe even a cat too since she liked some of Gendry’s cats and especially if they were raised at the same time, dogs and cats got on just fine…

She thought of Gendry, though, and the way his eyes got sad when she’d gone down onto the platform. She hadn’t texted him at all since she’d been here. She hadn’t known what to say. That she felt better? She didn’t think he’d believe her. That she missed him and the cats? Because she did, even if it was drowned in her elation at being with Jon again. That she wasn’t sure she’d be back? Because she wasn’t sure that was true.

She wasn’t sure that was true.

She closed her eyes. There might even be snow in the riverlands now. There were hints that this winter was harsher than any she’d known while she’d lived down there. She imagined the cats refusing to set foot out of doors because sure, it looked fluffy and interesting outside, but the moment their paws touched the cold they’d turn right back around and wait for it to be gone.

She imagined brushing snow out of Gendry’s hair, and sitting on the couch and watching the news with him, Ravella next to her and Harwin flopped on her lap while she pet his stomach, the distant sounds of Watty howling from the pantry because he’d finished his food and wanted more but wasn’t allowed near it just yet, maybe even the sound of Lem chewing his way through something he shouldn’t, Huntsman lying on the floor with his two lame legs and Gendry, all alone and sad and angry and not talking about why because he never did.

 _He doesn’t want me to go_ , she thought. But was that reason enough to go back? When that whole town reminded her of Mycah and the children she’d never have and feeling like she’d never be herself again.

She didn’t know.

“Gendry would be sad if I didn’t come back,” she said slowly, looking up at Jon.

Jon frowned. “Would you be, though?”

“I’d be sad to make him upset.”

Jon let out a hissing sound. “Arya, you being sad to make others upset kept you the way you were for—”

“It’s different,” she said, because it was. “I was scared then. And too messed up to think clearly. But I feel fortified now—and since when have I _ever_ wanted to hurt a friend? If I do leave, just not going back isn’t the way to do it. Not without a proper goodbye and everything.”

“You don’t know he’ll be hurting if you don’t—”

“I do,” Arya said firmly. It was something she knew in her gut. She just knew it. “Besides…things got better when I wasn’t at the house. And I never really lived down there. I was just sort of…existing.”

Jon was still watching her. “I’ll keep checking in on you,” he said at last, “I should have done that this whole time. I don’t…I…yeah. I’ll keep checking in. And you’ll bloody _tell me_ if you feel bad again, all right?” he said.

Arya smiled. “Yeah. I will this time.”

“Good,” Jon said. “I’ll miss you, little sister.” He hugged her close and it felt like home, lying on the floor of the living room, a little tipsy in Jon’s arms.

Later, after she’d climbed into bed, she pulled out her phone and called Gendry. It was late, but not so late that he’d be asleep. His phone went to voice mail and Arya said, “Hey—it’s me. I’ll be on the train that should get in at four thirty tomorrow afternoon unless the rails are in a bad way. I’ll keep you posted about that. I’ve missed you. See you soon.”

* * *

Arya texted Gendry from Moat Cailin to say that the train was on time, and that she’d see him soon, but when she got to the train station at the Crossroads, he wasn’t there. She looked on the platform—she saw some people coming to pick up their friends and family and meet them right as they got off the train—and in the station, but there was no sign of him. She called him, but his phone went straight to voice mail.

She went to the parking lot, she didn’t see any sign of his huge black car. She tried calling him again, but again, and when she heard his voice saying, “Hello, you’ve reached Gendry Smith. I am unavailable at the moment, but if you leave your name and a number where I can reach you, I’ll return your call as soon as I am able,” she glanced down at her watch. It was still business hours—maybe he hadn’t been able to get off work. Or maybe he was in pre-rush hour traffic that sometimes plagued the area.

But still, he could have let her know. He was good about communicating logistics like this.

She looked up the phone number for Jeyne’s inn on her phone and called it.

“CrissCross Inn, this is Magaly speaking,” came the crisp voice on the other end of the line.

“Hi, I’m looking for Jeyne Heddle?” Arya asked.

“One moment please,” said Magaly, and the line turned into smooth jazz for fifteen seconds before a very tired sounding Jeyne picked up the phone and said, “Hello?”

“Jeyne?” Arya asked.

“Yes, may I ask who’s—”

“It’s Arya Stark,” Arya said quickly. She’d only met Jeyne a few times. Of course she might not recognize her voice on the other end of the line.

“Oh!” Jeyne sounded surprised. “Is everything all—”

“I can’t get through to Gendry, and he was supposed to pick me up at the train station?” Arya did her best not to sound frustrated. She was tired, though, and that many hours on the train had made her stiff, and she wanted to be home already, and maybe take a bath.

“Oh, he left his phone in the car when it went to the impound,” Jeyne said. “He was supposed to get a new one today, but he hasn’t texted me to let me know it happened. Hang on—I’ll come grab you at the train station.” There was something strange that Arya couldn’t quite place in Jeyne’s voice, and Arya felt a chill creep up her spine. _You’re overthinking_ , she thought.

When the line went dead, she looked down at her phone and scrolled back through her text messages to Jon and Ygritte and Robb and Rickon and Bran to the last one that Gendry had sent. It was from a day before she’d taken her train.

_Can you grab some kitty litter on your way home?_

Then nothing. Nothing at all.


	11. Chapter 11

Gendry drove Arya to the train station at the Crossroads, near Jeyne’s. “I mean it,” he said for what felt like the millionth time. “If it feels right, stay there as long as you want. Hell, if you decide to move up there to be near your brother, I’ll help you sort out your stuff down here.”

Arya didn’t reply. Instead, she fixed her ponytail, which was shining today. She’d washed her hair and it hung neat and not nearly as messy and tangled as usual.

She gave him a quick hug before she got on the train, and waved again before she disappeared down the very clean escalator towards the platform. Gendry sighed and went out to the car.

It didn’t turn on. “Oh for fuck’s sake,” he muttered, turning the key in the ignition again. He called Jeyne. “Jeyne, can you come jump my car?”

“Look, you need to get a new car,” Jeyne said without preamble.

“I know,” Gendry grumbled, thinking of the night that Huntsman had fallen.

“Isn’t Arya closer to you, or is she at work?” Jeyne asked.

“I just put her on a train, actually. I’m about five minutes from the inn.”

“Oh.” He could hear Jeyne frowning. “I’ll be right over then. Hang on.”

The line went dead and Gendry tilted his head back against the headrest and stared at the ceiling of his car. It had been a good thing—the best investment he’d made, even if he’d bought it not-so-legally. He and a gruff bastard he’d once been friends with named Lurch had named it the Bull because it was a brute of a car. He remembered telling that to Bella when he’d picked her up one night. “ _Big like you, isn’t it?_ ” she’d winked at him and cracked the gum in her mouth, and he’d grinned—glad of a sister who didn’t resent his existence the way that Mya did.

He could afford a new car, he thought. If he triple checked his finances, and Lem didn’t eat any plastic in the next few weeks. He could get a smaller car—the sort that looked neat and professional and put together, and that kids could associate with someone who had their life together. Sometimes he thought that the Bull didn’t look that way. _I didn’t have my life together_ , he thought.

“Sell it for scrap,” Jeyne said through his window, and he started.

“Lord,” he said. “Don’t sneak up on me like that, will you?” he snapped at her.

“Not had your coffee today?”

“I did,” he said. Maybe it was putting Arya on a train. _Her life is more important than what she means to you_ , _you piece of shit,_ he reminded himself again. “But I could probably do with another one.”

“Well, I’ll get you jumped and then you can come to the inn and if I need to jump it again when you go, I’ll do it again.” Gendry nodded and got out of the car and popped the hood. A moment later, his battery was up and running and he was driving to the CrissCross behind Jeyne.

It was quiet when he got there, that empty time between morning check-out and afternoon check-in and it was only then that he realized he’d caught Jeyne in a good moment. _If I’d tried calling her when check-in was happening…_ He remembered that tone in her voice from the other night as he followed her into her office. She hit the button on her coffee machine and even just the sound of it gurgling in the corner made Gendry feel a little better.

_God you fucking addict._

Better coffee than booze, he reminded himself, accepting a mug from Jeyne and taking a sip. And when he had coffee in his system, he’d stop thinking that way—he’d have the energy and the strength to keep everything in order.

He frowned.

“I gave you this mug,” he said, looking down at it. It had pawprints on it, and the phrase _Home is where your cat is._ He’d gotten it as a joke for Jeyne when Watty had decided Jeyne wasn’t allowed in her own bed anymore. He was frankly still amazed that Arya had been allowed to sleep in that bed at all.

“You did,” said Jeyne, rolling her eyes. “And I save it for you, just in case, because it fits you more than it fits me.” Gendry snorted. “Where’s Arya going?” Jeyne asked.

“To visit her brother up at the Wall,” Gendry said. He wished he didn’t sound as much like a whiny teenager as he did. Another sip of coffee.

“That’ll be nice for her,” Jeyne said. “Visiting siblings is always good.” Gendry hummed noncommittally, knowing exactly where this was going. “How are your sisters? Your real sisters, I mean?”

“Fine,” Gendry said through gritted teeth. “Mya’s still a park ranger and Bella’s had her twins.” He didn’t need to say more than that. His tone would say enough to keep Jeyne away from it.

“You work really hard. Don’t you think it’d be good to take a vacation yourself?” Jeyne hinted.

“What about you?” Gendry demanded. “Why don’t you take a vacation, if you’re stressed out.”

“You know I can’t,” Jeyne said. “I have all _this_ to run.”

“I bet it wouldn’t collapse if you took a weekend.”

“A few weekdays,” Jeyne corrected. “Weekends are always heavier. But anyway, not worth the risk right now.”

“Yeah, well, some of my cases aren’t worth the risk either.”

He thought of little Aemma. She’d be fine if he jumped town for a week, of that he was sure. And none of his older cases were causing trouble at the moment, but he knew—he _knew_ —how quickly that could change.

“What’s got your panties in a twist?” Jeyne asked. She looked pointedly at the coffee in his hand. “That your second cup?”

“Yeah,” he grunted.

“It’s not working.” Gendry glared at her. “Well, it’s not,” she said defensively. “Usually with two cups you’re—well, not the picture of charm, but you’re not like a sixteen-year-old rage-monster. You really don’t like her leaving, do you?”

“It’s for the best,” Gendry said. “She should see her brothers. Get them back in her life.”

“I meant _you._ I know it’s the best for her, but it’s hard for you, isn’t it.” Jeyne leaned forward and her face was soft. “You know that she’ll still care about you, even if she doesn’t come back, right? Don’t look at me like that.”

Gendry was only vaguely aware that he was giving her a death glare.  He tried to wipe it from his face. Jeyne shouldn’t get death glares ever. Especially not when she was stressed out and still made time for him.

It was that, more than anything else, that soothed him.

“Yeah,” he sighed. “She’ll still care.”

It didn’t make the sensation of being left behind any easier.

* * *

It was Ravella who noticed first among the cats that Arya was gone. She poked her head around the door to the bedroom—where Watty and Mudge had already installed themselves on the spare bed—then, finding that Arya wasn’t there, went to the living room and sniffed at the chair that Arya usually curled up in while she and Gendry watched TV. She jumped up onto the chair, continuing to sniff at it for a moment or two, then sat down and looked at Gendry with a baleful eye. _What did you do_ , she seemed to ask him.

“She went to visit her brother,” Gendry said to the cat.

Ravella did not understand, and began licking her stomach.

That night, before going to sleep, Gendry went and stuck his head into the room that Arya had stayed in. He hadn’t really looked in on it too often. It was her space, but she’d barely made a mark there. Watty was crouched in the spot where Gendry was fairly certain she usually slept, and he saw her hairbrush on the dresser, but apart from that, there was no sign of her. Maybe she’d been a ghost of some sort, or some figment of his imagination, about as real as his mother. Visceral for the way she made him feel, but gone in the end.

Gone.

Gendry closed his eyes and shook his head like a dog’s, then went into the laundry room and decided that he would lift until his arms shook, then he’d take a shower and go to bed, too tired to drown in whatever he was feeling right now.

* * *

Gendry did what he could to keep himself busy. And, as if the Lord of Light knew he needed distraction, two of his more even cases began to fall apart and Gendry spent many long hours in the office and driving to and from their houses, having long serious conversations and feeling simultaneously very useful and completely useless.

He didn’t hear anything from Arya all week. He was tempted to text her, asking her if he could use her car, but he didn’t in the end. _Don’t interrupt her time at home_ , he thought. _If it shatters some illusion, you’ll never forgive yourself._ Instead, he borrowed Jeyne’s car when he needed to run errands and took the bus into town when he could. He drank three cups of coffee every day and spent sleepless nights with Leaves sitting on his head, warm and purring, listening to the sound of Sevens’ kittens scampering about the house.

 _At least she wants me_ , he thought bitterly, reaching up to run his hand along the cat’s fur. He could pretend, at least, with the cats. They liked him well enough, liked the way that fed them, at least. And was a giant warm thing they could sit on when he was home, and who pet them sometimes.

It snowed on Warriorsday and for the first time in years he had all the cats inside at once. There wasn’t a one that disappeared into the woods to try fending for itself as Ned and Anguy had a few years back. They all huddled together for warmth and watched in horror as cold damp white fluffy stuff fell from the sky—at least until Thoros lost interest and dove under Gendry’s blankets for warmth.

“Are you warm enough?” Gendry asked Aemma when he next saw her. She was wearing a puffy pink coat, and her face was a little less thin and a little less morose.

She nodded, the twin braids on either side of her head jiggling as she did so.

“What are your midwinter plans?” he asked Lorinda, who described plans to take Aemma and Kevan down to Dorne for some sun and sand after the solstice. _Everyone’s fleeing except me,_ he thought. Codex showed him photographs of Willow in the Summer Isles, buying feather-patterned dresses and having her hair braided into rows that hung with beads and getting drunk with her friends.

On the solstice, he called Jeyne, but she almost cried when he suggested getting dinner because there was so much to get done and she couldn’t possibly take a moment away just then.

So Gendry spent the holiday alone with his cats. He sat there, drinking coffee because he if he didn’t drink coffee he’d drink something else and wondering if at least Arya was happy up north while he was miserable and alone here.

* * *

He called Jeyne on Fathersday, hating the way his voice sounded even to his own ears. “How would you feel about coming to some test drives with me?” he asked her.

There was near-silence on the other end of the phone, though he heard her breath shaking. “I…yeah. When?”

“Tomorrow,” he said. “I was going to go to Brune’s and Sinster’s to check out some sedans.”

There was no jab about how that would make a change, nothing about how he was about to get a new car. Just Jeyne breathing. He really didn’t like that.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll come get you around ten?”

“Don’t you have work?”

“I’ll take a day.”

If it weren’t for her tone of voice, he’d have celebrated it. “Jeyne?” he asked, and for the first time since Arya left, he was fully focused on something besides his own loneliness. “What’s—”

“Ten o’clock,” she said, and her voice sounded desperate and the line went dead and she was gone.

Gendry stared at his phone for a moment. _What’s going on?_ he texted her.

 _Seen at 6:37._ But there was no response.

_Jeyne._

_Seen at 6:38._

Gendry texted Willow. _Has Jeyne said anything to you lately?_

_Seen at 6:39._

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Gendry muttered to himself, wondering what had gotten into the pair of them lately. He tried a different tactic.

_How’re the Summer Isles?_

_Good._

_Getting a tan?_

_Seen at 6:41._

Gendry rolled his eyes and chucked his phone across the room. It fell on the ground and clattered near where Sevens was sitting. Sevens leapt to her feet, then stared at it, affronted and hurried off to a different corner of the living room, where she began to clean herself passive aggressively.

* * *

Jeyne was pale when she came to get him the next morning. Her knuckles were white when she gripped her steering wheel. She was silent throughout Gendry’s test drives of Brune’s Eagle and Falcon Knight, and didn’t say a word over lunch before they went to Sinster’s to test out the Trident.

The entire time, her face was withdrawn, and she looked—not like Arya when Arya had been…no, that would have been better. She looked like how she’d looked when she’d been twenty and had dropped out of school the first time.

“Jeyne you’re scaring me,” he said when she pulled up in front of his house again.

It was that, more than anything else, that made tears leak from Jeyne’s eyes and she leaned forward and rested her head against the steering wheel.

“Gen, I bought some,” she said. “I—it’s…this morning. It’s in the glove compartment.”

Gendry’s hand flew to the compartment in front of him and he opened it. There was a little plastic bag, filled with white powder.

“Jeyne,” he breathed. There wasn’t much, but that was no comfort. It would only take a little bit and all would go to shit.

“I haven’t used,” she said quickly. “I didn’t. I had to come get you. Gen, I was so stressed—I…I…”

Gendry unbuckled his seat belt and got out of the car, holding the little bag of heroin in his hand. He wouldn’t let her keep it. She didn’t want him to. That’s why she’d told him. He’d flush it down the toilet when he got inside—but how much had she spent on it?

He opened her door and helped her out of the car, and she stumbled into his arms, grabbing hold of the front of his coat and holding him tightly as she sobbed. “Fuck. Just _fuck._ ”

“It’s ok,” he said to her. “It’s fine. You’re fine. You’ll be fine.”

But she was shaking her head and sobbing. “I hate myself,” she sobbed.

 _I know the feeling_ , Gendry wanted to say but didn’t. Not now. Not when she needed him strong. He could be strong when people needed him strong, even on no coffee.

“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t you dare.”

“I do though,” Jeyne sobbed. “I can’t even get myself on my feet properly. I _hate this_.” She was shaking so hard and he picked her up and carried her inside the house, nudging a curious Thoros out of the way with his foot as he brought her inside and settled her on the couch.

“Water? Coffee? Something to eat? A bath?” he asked her, desperately hoping that she’d pick one of them, but she just sat there, shuddering and shaking.

“Phone,” he said, and she handed hers to him, and he found the text conversation with a number that wasn’t saved into the phone. He deleted it, then went to Jeyne’s preferences app and blocked the number from contacting her again. He handed the phone back to her and she held it, tears streaking down her face.

He went into the bathroom and flushed the bag away, then brought Jeyne a towel. “Stay here tonight,” he told her. “And take a shower. You’ll feel better once you’re clean.”

“I don’t have any clothes,” she said.

“You can wear some of Arya’s. I’m sure she won’t mind.” His stomach lurched. He was sure she wouldn’t mind—not at all, but still...he wished she were here, wished she were in the kitchen making coffee for the pair of them, giving Gendry significant looks, or sitting on the couch holding Jeyne.

Or maybe it was good she was gone. Jeyne could have her bed, and she wouldn’t see just how much Gendry needed her.

He closed his eyes for a moment. _Stop it, you don’t need her._

But he wanted her there. Wanted her there now, wished he could text her and not ruin her time with her brother saying, _I know I said you should stay there, but I want you here. Jeyne’s falling apart. And Willow…_

He drew up the Codex app on his phone and went to Willow’s profile. He scrolled through the photos she’d been recently tagged in and…There it was. She’d untagged herself, but it was in an album that Joss had uploaded—her with her arms around Clydas’ neck while he sucked on her neck. _No, Willow. No._

_Everything’s falling apart._

_“I can’t even get on my feet properly,”_ Jeyne had said. Gendry thought of Bella and he almost laughed.

There was nothing funny about it at all.

* * *

 

Jeyne slept in his room on his bed with him. Watty and Mudge clearly remembered her and refused to let her on the bed that they’d let Arya sleep on, so she curled up next to Gendry. He woke twice in the night, hearing her crying to herself.

She took the next day off as well, and Gendry cooked for them both. They didn’t talk much. Gendry was tempted to show her the pictures of Willow in the Summer Isles. It might distract her, but it also might make everything worse. Instead, he put on a documentary about the Last of the Giants and they watched six hours of archeological work being done beyond the Wall.

This, as it turned out, was a bad idea, because whenever there was a shot of the Wall—and there were at least three per episode—he thought of Arya and glanced at his phone.

She still hadn’t texted him.

 _I don’t matter_ , he thought.

 _Don’t be stupid,_ said the caffeinated part of him. _She’s busy and with her family._

But each time that great big fucking block of ice was on screen, he kept fucking checking to see if, magically, she’d had something to say. Even something nonsensical, even a bland “hey” or whatever the fuck to show that he still registered even when she was half a country away…

But no.

Nothing.

He went and made himself more coffee.

_You don’t matter. You’ve never mattered. Except to your damn cats, and that’s because you feed them. Them and Jeyne and Willow…_

He’d thought maybe Arya too.

But he supposed he’d been wrong about that.

* * *

He bade his car goodbye on Maindensday. It was snowing again lightly, and he brushed some flakes off the hood of the car after putting it in neutral for the tow-truck. He watched some stranger drive away that car that he’d driven since he was sixteen, before shivering, crossing his arms over his chest and going inside. He went through the laborious process of combing each of the cats—something that was harder than it looked given that he only had two hands and had yet to meet a cat that didn’t  _adore_ being combed, even the skittish ones, and so sometimes they got aggressive trying to get his attention which meant that some of them had slap-dash combing jobs while others got to luxuriate beneath the brush, and as the sun was beginning to set, went to find his phone to call Jeyne.

It wasn’t sitting on his bed where he thought he’d left it.

It wasn’t on the sofa, or under the cushions—something the cats did not particularly appreciate his search for since it involved dislodging some of them.

He stared at the discarded cushions of the couch, thinking hard. He’d last had his phone that morning when he’d checked in on Jeyne and went to look at Willow’s Codex page again to see if there was any sign of Clydas, and then the tow truck had come and he’d left it on the bed.

But no.

No he hadn’t. He’d checked to see if Arya had texted him with her train information, or at least to say for real that she wasn’t coming back, and he’d stuck it in his pocket. His hands flew to his jeans, and he felt his stomach lurch.

He scrambled to the never-used landline on the kitchen counter, almost stepping on Swampy Meg as she lapped up water from a bowl and typed in his phone number. It rang and he ran back to the living room, praying to hear the distant buzzing, but he couldn’t. He went back outside and dialed again, and the phone rang, but it wasn’t lying on the ground under the light dusting of snow.

Gendry cursed, and went back inside. He looked up the number of the impound on his computer and called, but the line was busy and he hung up. He logged into his email and sent Jeyne a chat.

_I think my phone fell out of my pocket while the car was getting towed._

_Shit. Have you called them?_

_Line’s busy. I’ll try again._

He did, and this time it went through.

“Hi,” he said quickly, “My name’s Gendry Smith and my car was picked up this morning. I think my phone fell out of my pocket while I was collecting some things from it. Is there a way to check?”

He heard the woman on the other end of the line wheeze. “Big black thing?”

“Yeah, that’s the one,” he said.

“It’s already been compressed. If that phone was inside it, there’s nothing I can do.”

Gendry blinked. That was fast. Wouldn’t they have at least stripped her of parts before compressing her? That, he supposed, implied that some part of her was still useful. _They wouldn’t have needed to go in the cab if they did strip parts, though._

“Thanks anyway,” he sighed and hung up, chucking the phone onto the floor.

 _I think it’s gone,_ he typed into the chatbox.

 _:(_ was Jeyne’s instantaneous response. _Run out and get a new one?_

_Don’t have a car yet_

_When does the new one get dropped off?_

_Tomorrow mid-afternoon_

_How are you getting to work?_

_Taking another day off_

_The cats’ll like that_

Gendry snorted. They probably wouldn’t even notice. Well, Watty would, because he’d roll about trying to get Gendry to feed him more. Revella still looked at him angrily as though wondering what on earth Gendry had done with Arya. It helped nothing.

Gendry sighed and closed his computer and stared up at the ceiling. She hadn’t told him what train she was going to be on. She’d said she would when she’d sorted everything out up north, if she was coming back.

_She’s not coming back. She’s doing what’s best for her._

Part of him was proud—she’d listened. She was doing her best to heal.

Part of him wanted to punch a wall.

He blinked.

He wasn’t a violent person. Not even in school, when, as he’d told Arya, he could have bullied if he’d wanted to. Instead, he’d just pushed everyone away from him, and they’d bloody stayed away because no one wanted to mess with him. The only time he’d ever felt like punching a wall, he’d been so angry that he’d gone and—

He lurched from the bed and went to the coffee machine. _She’s gone_ , he told himself. _There’s nothing you can do about it. You shouldn’t have been a possessive ass in the first place. You were going to help her and that was it._

She made him feel like he was sixteen again. That wasn’t good.

 _She made me feel better too, though,_ he thought. He didn’t realize he was trembling until he poured himself a mug of coffee. _She made me feel worth it._

And now he felt worthless. Left behind. Again.

And he couldn’t even blame her. He couldn’t, he couldn’t, he shouldn’t.

_Fuck her, though._

_Fuck her for leaving me without a word._

He was glad, as he poured himself a mug of steaming Tyroshi Roast that he was very glad he didn’t have a car right now, because if he did he might just drive himself to a liquor store and drown himself in a bottle of whiskey.


	12. Chapter 12

She was sitting in the lobby when Gendry came in, reading through some emails on her phone. But she looked up almost at once when he walked through the door, and a smile spread across her face at the sight of him. It made everything worse.

“Hey!” she said, getting to her feet and giving him a hug. She was warm in his arms, and there. Why was she there? Why had she come back? Why hadn’t she stayed away? And why did he feel relief that she was there, when she’d gone and made things worse for herself by coming back for him?

“Hi,” he said, and his voice sounded alien to his own ears.

“You got a new car?” she asked him.

“Yeah,” he said. “It finally died.” He couldn’t look at her. Couldn’t look at her face, because he didn’t want to see her happy to see him again. He didn’t think he could…

“May it rest in peace,” Arya said seriously. Then she went to grab her suitcase. It was as though someone invaded his body and reminded him he was being rude, and he reached out to grab the handle of it and when her hand touched his, his stomach lurched. _Fuck you, you traitor asshole. Don’t you dare._

“Oh,” Arya said, surprised. “I can take it.”

“Nah, I got it. It’s good.”

He saw Jeyne from her office. She waved at him and gave him a tremulous smile. _I should say hi to her,_ Gendry thought, but Jeyne was already turning back to her computer, and if he went and said hi, then Arya would drag her bag out into the parking lot, and she didn’t even know what his new car looked like. _Jeyne would say if there was a problem, wouldn’t she?_

He let go of the bag and went towards her office, knocking on the eave of the open door. “All ok?” he asked her.

She looked up from her computer again, and reached for her coffee mug. It was the cat one that she’d given Gendry, and she gave him a firm look. “Go take Arya home,” she said. “I’m doing all right today.”

“Talk to you tomorrow?” he asked.

“Of course,” she said. Then her eyes narrowed. “Are you all right?” she asked him.

“Fine,” Gendry lied.

“Gen—”

“Just tired. Stressful day.” He picked his phone out of his pocket and swung it around in his fingers for Jeyne to see. “Why are wireless carriers such assholes?”

Jeyne was still watching him, but she relented. “Didn’t get enough love from their mamas,” she said.

“Too real,” Gendry muttered. “Anyway, talk to you tomorrow.”

Arya was not in the lobby, and just as he’d predicted, she was standing outside in the parking lot, looking down at her phone again and waiting for him since she didn’t recognize his new silver car. He grabbed the handle of her bag and settled it into the trunk while Arya got into the passenger seat, and a moment later, he was pulling out into rush hour traffic.

“Jon says hi,” Arya said as he inched the car forward towards route six.

Gendry grunted. _She told him about me, at least._

“It was good to see him?” he asked after a moment, surprised at how casual his voice sounded.

“Amazing,” Arya said and her voice was positively alight. “I don’t even know where to begin. It was just amazing to see him. And how far he’s come—like, his daughter’s grown so much since I last saw her, and he and Ygritte are having another baby, and—” and she was off, diving into a long monologue about her time at the Wall, about meeting Jon’s friends, about a daytrip down to Winterfell to see her other brothers, about how she felt refreshed having gone, and how it had been clarifying. Gendry nodded and hummed where appropriate, but with every passing moment, he felt anger boiling in him, which only made him feel worse. What sort of greedy bastard was he that he couldn’t even listen to her being enthused.

 _This is how she is when she’s really herself_ , he thought. _When she’s full of life and energy. This is who she is for Jon Snow, and who she was for Mycah._ She’d never been that way for him, though. She never would be, because she was going to leave, wasn’t she? That was the next step. Reconnect with her family, smile, remember that life continued and that she didn’t have to stay in this town where there was nothing for her—not even Gendry.

“How are you?” she asked as he got off the main road. “It snowed here. Did the cats enjoy that?”

Gendry snorted. “Nah. They’ve all been huddled by the heater and looking morosely outside. Huntsman might have gone out, but he can’t anymore.” Arya made a cooing sound. “I’ve just been…around.” He shrugged.

“Nothing major at work, or…”

“Oh,” Gendry said. Of course she’d ask that. “Well, it’s usually hard around the holidays. Aemma saw her mum again, and wanted to go back home, but obviously she can’t, so she was upset. And some of my other cases…” he thought of Pate, who’d gotten into a fight with his foster brother, and Megga who was having trouble paying rent now that she’d finally moved out of her boyfriend’s apartment and her little boy Garse who was pickpocketing again. “Well, it’s always hard around the holiday season.”

“Because it’s a stressful time or—”

“Because that’s when people have to think about family,” Gendry said and his voice was hard. “I’ve been on call most of the time, even if the office has been shut.”

Arya nodded, understanding. “So you didn’t really get time off,” she said. Gendry thought of Jeyne, thought of Willow, who was back from the Summer Isles but hadn’t texted, or phoned or anything.

“No,” he said shortly. “Not really.”

Arya reached over and patted his hand, which was resting on the gear shift. “Well, I’ll cook dinner tonight,” she said. “And you can relax some.”

Gendry cast her a sideways glance.

The dark circles under her eyes were gone, and her smile reached her eyes and they shone like silver.

* * *

Gendry was in a strange mood. She knew that. She’d noticed it the second he’d come to get her. He was silent through dinner, and was quick to retreat into his room after they ate.

Arya did her best not to mind too much. Instead, she sat on the couch with the television on in the background, Ravella and Harwin purring loudly on either side of her, glad that she’d come back to them from whatever adventures had taken her far away. To her surprise, Mudge had forgone her bed for her suitcase, which was filled with her laundry, and Melly was sniffing nervously at her coat which she’d left on a chair, as if unsure if these unfamiliar scents indicated safety or danger.

Gendry didn’t close his door, though, and Arya saw the light from his room, heard the periodic clicking of his computer mouse.

She took a bath that night, Ravella watching her with concerned eyes as she always did, and when she put on her pajamas and left the bathroom behind, Thoros snuck past her legs to sit in the empty but warm bathtub. There would be reddish cat hair all over it tomorrow, she did not doubt. She smiled to herself as she looked back at the cat, and clicked the light off.

“Good night,” she said to Gendry, poking her head around his door. Leaves was sitting next to him, and Melly was crouched on the rug near his dresser. He looked up from his computer, and Arya felt her mouth go dry. She knew that look too well—that blankness in the eyes, that forced calm on a face that...

“Good night,” he said at the same time that she said, “Gendry, what’s wrong.”

He blinked at her.

“Nothing,” he said, and it sounded like he thought she was asking a stupid question. “I’m fine. Just tired.”

But she shook her head. Gendry’s lips parted slightly and he looked somewhere between surprised and frightened.

“It’s nothing,” he said again.

“Really?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning against the doorframe.

“Yes,” he repeated stubbornly.

“Why don’t I believe you then?” she asked.

There was anger in his eyes now. She’d never seen anger there. But he didn’t say a word, and she knew he was forcing himself to stay calm like he’d once said. He was forcing himself not to respond in anger.

“You should,” he said through gritted teeth.

 _No, I shouldn’t_ , said a voice in her head and Arya looked down at her hands. She saw her engagement ring, and the diamond seemed dull in the middle of the platinum band. _If he were Mycah, I’d make him tell me_. But did she have the right to make Gendry?

_Of course you do, stupid. He’s your friend. And that’s what he did for you._

She looked up. Gendry’s eyes were on her ring too, and his face was in shadow from the angle of his bedside lamp. Arya marched across the room and sat down on the bed. Leaves made a mewling sound, clearly disgruntled at the mattress moving and dislodging her slightly. She raised her eyebrows and stared at Gendry, refusing to break eye contact at all. His eyes were so angry, but for a moment, she didn’t see that. She only saw how blue they are, and in the poor lighting of his bedroom, they’re darker than usual, and his pupils were wide and black.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Gendry said.

“Like what?”

“Like _that_ ,” he said, and he looked away. He was older than she was by a few years, but he looked like a scared little boy all of a sudden.

“You’re going to have to clarify,” she said, but he didn’t.

“What do you think is going to happen if you tell me what’s wrong?” Arya asked gently. She wanted to rest a hand on his leg. If it were Jon, she would have. Instead, she contented herself with reaching over and petting Leaves.

Gendry didn’t reply, and she let out a frustrated grumble. “Gendry,” she said. “I’m not going to bite your head off, or run away, or whatever it is you think. But if you’re upset about something—” she cut herself off and his eyes snapped back to hers. More fear than anger now. She didn’t know if that was a good thing or not.

He licked his lips, twice, and opened his mouth. “I can’t,” he whispered, and she remembered sitting in Jeyne’s inn, saying the exact same thing. He’d made her say it anyway.

“Don’t you dare,” she hissed at him. “You can’t not tell me.”

“I—”

“Gendry, you’re the one who said I was stupid for not telling Jon or Bran or Robb about what was going on with me. You can’t go and—”

“I’m sitting here wondering when you’re going to leave me, ok?” he snapped angrily. “You should. It’s what’s best for you. And everyone always leaves me in the end, right? My mum, my foster parents, my half-sisters, my piece-of-shit dad—they all just leave, so when do you leave?”

“I’m not—” Arya began, but Gendry laughed, even though he clearly didn’t think it was funny. She hated the sound of it.

“You are,” he said. “You’re going to go back to Jon, or Winterfell, or down to Dorne for some sunshine, and I’ll get midwinter cards and Codex updates and that’ll be it. I’ll be alone again. Which is probably best, because what sort of horrible person am I?”

“You’re not a horrible person,” said Arya, confused.

Gendry laughed that laugh again. “Don’t be an idiot.” His voice was scathing. “You’d be well shut of me. Everyone always is.”

“You’re talking madness,” Arya said firmly.

“Am I?” he demanded. “I know exactly what I am, Arya. I’m not a good person, and never will be.”

“But you are.”

“I’m not,” he said again, and he shook his head and his eyes were wild, much too alert for someone who said he was tired. She looked at his bedside table and saw the coffee pot there. _His heart is going to be racing,_ she thought. _He’s over caffeinated. It’s…_

She got to her feet again and walks around to the other side of the bed and sat down next to him and took one of his hands in hers. “Gendry,” she said quietly. “You’re not a bad person. I don’t know what’s making you say that, but you’re not. You couldn’t be.”

“Oh yeah?” he said darkly. “You don’t know me.”

“I do,” Arya said firmly.

“You don’t. You don’t know what I’ve done.”

“What, help children who have bad families try and escape abuse?” she demanded hotly. “Rescue cats in need? Take care of your sisters? Take care of _me?_ ”

He blinked at her. “That’s not—that’s only part of it.”

“You’re the one who says you have no life, that you’re a boring old man,” she said. “I don’t know what’s put you in this state of mind, I don’t know what you could have done to make you think that all of that is worthless. But let me just say—I’m not going anywhere. I’m not. And certainly not while you’re like this. Not when you didn’t turn your back on me. So stop being frightened that I’m going to run away from you, or abandon you, because I’m not.”

“You should,” he snapped.

“I shouldn’t.” She refused to raise her voice. She refused. Her mother had always raised her voice when she argued, when she was upset, but her father had rarely shouted, and that had always been more calming, even when she knew he was angry. She squeezed Gendry’s hand. “I wouldn’t.”

“I want you to stay even when it’s not what’s best for you,” he repeated.

“You don’t get to decide what’s best for me,” she said calmly. “You don’t, Jon doesn’t, no one but me gets to do that.”

He stared at her, his mouth popping open in surprise.

“I appreciate all you’ve done for me,” Arya continued. “You helped me help myself. That was more than I managed on my own. And gods know I’m frightened of…” she couldn’t bring herself to say it, frightened of sliding back into that empty numb feeling, where nothing seemed to have any flavor or color at all. “But you don’t get to tell me how to avoid that. I’m not a child.”

“You see?” he said quickly. “That’s what I’m—”

But Arya saw precisely what he was doing and cut him off. “You’re not bad for wanting it, though. You want what’s best for me. That’s kindness.”

Gendry’s mouth popped open as if he hadn’t been expecting her to say that. His eyes flickered between hers, and she continued.

“I want what’s best for my friends. And I tell them what I think is best, and then if they listen to me, I’m glad I was able to help, and if they don’t I understand that that’s their choice. Do you understand that it’s my choice?”

“Yes, but—”

“There’s no but,” she snapped, kicking herself for losing that calm.

“There is,” Gendry said as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. “I understand it, but I still want you to listen to me and do as I tell you.”

“Of course you do,” she said. “That’s humanity for you. We like to be right. In this case, you’re not in the right frame of mind to be able to decide what’s good for me. If you were, you’d understand that I’m right and you’re misguided for the moment.”

Gendry gaped at her, and Arya reached out a hand and cupped his cheek. His skin was hot—too hot. Did he have a fever of some sort? Or was his heart just pumping fast because he was agitated. He closed his eyes and for a moment, he looked relieved. Then a look of pure pain crossed his face.

“What is it?” she asked gently, and she shifted closer to him, letting her hand fall from his cheek to his shoulder, feeling his muscles beneath his t-shirt.

“That doesn’t make me a good person,” he said and each word sounded like he was ripping his skin apart. “There’s…there’s other stuff.”

“Like what.”

“You’ll hate me.”

“I won’t.”

“I hate myself,” he said.

Arya went still.

“Does Jeyne hate you?” she asked. “Willow?”

“They don’t know,” he said, his eyes were still closed, like he couldn’t bring himself to open them.

“You didn’t kill someone, did you?” she asked. He shook his head, his face contorting. “Then it can’t be—”

“I slept with my sister, Arya,” he said.

Arya blinked at him, and horror dawned on her. “ _You said Jeyne didn’t know_ ,” she said. Or was it Willow. Oh gods, he _hadn’t_ —

“No,” he said quickly, disgust and etched in every line of his face. “No, not like that. God. No. Not Jeyne or Willow,” and Arya felt herself sag in relief. “Bella. My half-sister. My _actual_ sister.”

“The one who’s in the Reach?” she asked. “With her husband and kids?”

“Yeah. That one.”

“What happened?” she asked him, and his breath was shaky and his eyes were bright and she knew that whatever it was he was going to tell her… _gods_.

“I told you a bit I was wild when I was sixteen,” he said, “and younger than that. Before Beric and Thoros and Jeyne and Willow,” he said. “Angry all the time, and unsure of what I meant in the world and…” He gulped.

“Yes,” Arya said quickly. “I remember.”

“I met some of my half-siblings,” he said. “Beric told me I shouldn’t look them up, that their lives were different from mine. And he wasn’t wrong. Edric was in tip-top shape. Was practically raised by my dad’s family. Fancy boarding schools and shit and everything I’d never had. And Mya had a good adoptive family and she had a lot of trust issues, but like…well off in the world. And then there was Bella.

“She’s a couple years older than me, and was out of the system at that point and she was a sex worker, and…I don’t know, she was angry the same way as me. She was…I don’t know. And we just…like we both fucking _knew_ what we were, and we didn’t give a shit. And…and…”

There were tears in his eyes now, and Arya wrapped her arms around him and he buried his face in her neck, hugging her so tightly she almost couldn’t breathe. His heart was pounding in his chest. How long they sat like that, arms around one another, Gendry shaking and sobbing, she didn’t know.

“You were just a kid,” she whispered, running hands through soft dark hair. “You were just a kid, and the world was horrible to you when you—”

“I knew what I was doing. I wasn’t drunk or anything,” he said.

“That doesn’t make it different,” she said, “You were in pain, Gendry.” _You are still in pain,_ she couldn’t quite bring herself to say.

He didn’t respond, though he did speak. “And the next day, I got so blind drunk I ended up in the hospital,” he said. “And Beric—Beric he…I couldn’t tell him what I’d done, so he thought there was something wrong with my foster family, and put me in a new one. And there was Willow in my foster family with me, and Jeyne who was out of the system and struggling with—” he cut himself off. “Anyway, they…Willow’s…she’s…I just needed to…to not be myself for a while, so I decided I’d just be there for them. And that’s…that’s how I’ve been, I guess. I stopped drinking, I…I… but I’m…”

Arya tightened her arms around him. “You are you,” she said. “You’re not pretending to be you, not some version of you you’ve concocted. You are you. And you are good. And what you did when you were sixteen…it defines you no more than anything you’ve done since then.”

He let out a strangled sob, and Arya pressed a kiss to his cheek and held him. How long she held him, she didn’t know. She just kept him in her arms, breathing with him until his breathing grew steady and his heart rate slowed.

At some point, he pulled himself away from her. His eyes were rimmed with red, and he wouldn’t look at her, but they weren’t angry, or scared.

Arya slept next to him on his bed that night, stirring only when Lem came to worm his way between the two of them. When she woke the next morning, Gendry was already awake, and Arya wondered if he’d managed to sleep at all.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay in posting this. It's been a rough week. I hope the next one won't be too long to post.  
> Speaking of: the next one will be a chapter and then an epilogue so the anticipated chapter count will bump from 14 to 15. I've never posted an epilogue before, and it'll go up at the same time as chapter 14 so I wanted to give you a head's up about that!

They didn’t talk more about it, but they didn’t need to. Gendry relaxed visibly. Sometimes Arya caught him watching her, when they were watching the news, for example, or when she was cooking them dinner. She let him be for the most part, which seemed to do him good.  Her staying even though she knew was more calming than anything she could have said.

“I think I’m going to talk to Doctor Rivers about coming to the clinic full time,” Arya told him one night. She was lying on the floor, dragging a bit of feathers attached to the end of a string around the around, much to the frustration of Swampy Meg, who seemed to want little more than to catch and eat the wily creature.

“Yeah?” Gendry asked her. He was on his laptop at the kitchen table, typing away a report for a meeting the next day.

“Yeah,” she said. “I like working at that clinic. It’d be nice to do it every day.”

Gendry looked over the top of his computer screen, pulling it towards him so that he wouldn’t be distracted by whatever was there. “You don’t think that you’ll miss the wolves?” he asked her.

She shook her head. “I mean, I will. I’m pretty sure of that. But…I don’t know. I like working with them a lot, but I miss clinical work. I think the clinic was what got me through, and now that I’m doing a bit better, it might be nice to be there more officially. And then I won’t have to work nights as much.”

Gendry smiled at her tentatively. “That sounds like a plan,” he said slowly. “Good steps towards getting things back in order.”

Arya nodded and Swampy Meg began chewing on the feather that was largely abandoned while she spoke to Gendry. Arya tugged it loose and the cat pounced again.

Arya glanced back at Gendry. He looked almost like he was dreading the next question. “The house?”

“Found a broker. It’s in good condition, so I imagine it’ll go fast and that’ll be that,” she said. “I don’t really have…I don’t have much of a plan about living.”

“You know you can stay here as long as you’d like,” Gendry said gruffly. He wasn’t looking at her, but rather at the cat who’d caught the feather and was chewing it again. Arya tugged it loose again.

“Yeah, I know,” she said slowly, feeling her own voice tremble. “I just…I’d like that. I like being here. If you don’t mind my being here.”

Gendry looked at her as though she was out of her mind for a moment, and Arya added dryly, “You’re not a bad guy, Gendry.”

The corner of his mouth twitched in a smile. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m getting that vibe from you. Yeah, I’d like you to stay. I mean, I think you knew that.”

Arya nodded. “I like being here with you,” she said, and she refused to break eye contact with him, so that he’d know that she really meant it.

* * *

Gendry was at work when Jeyne called him, and he answered his phone immediately, even though he was in the office and usually didn’t take calls. Jeyne didn’t usually call him during the day.

“What’s up?” he asked her by way of greeting, but she was crying too much for him to understand. “Jeyne,” he said, more nervous than he’d been before. “Jeyne you didn’t, did you?”

He got up from his desk and went out into the hallway. His supervisor wouldn’t care—he never did this, and would know it was an emergency.

“No,” Jeyne sobbed. “It’s Willow—I can’t—I can’t reach Willow. And I went onto her Codex page and—Gen, Clydas’ all over her page. I…I…She can’t. She can’t, she just—” Gendry sagged against the plate glass window of the officeplex.

“I’ll call her,” he said.

“She didn’t pick up the phone from me,” Jeyne sobbed. “I called her _six_ times, and she always picks up.”

“Maybe she’s in class,” Gendry said.

“She doesn’t take classes today. She’s always free. We usually talk before check-in.”

“I can—shit.” He couldn’t take the afternoon. He was supposed to be meeting with the Farmers and checking in with them about the start of the new semester. “Shit shit shit.”

“What?” Jeyne asked.

“I was going to drive down to Maidenpool, but I can’t. I can’t take any time today. Shit.”

Jeyne began to cry again, and her voice was hysterical, and Gendry knew that even if he could drive down to Maidenpool…Jeyne shouldn’t be alone right now. “Are you at work?”

“Yes,” Jeyne said.

“What time do you get off?”

“Not until nine,” she said.

“I will be there when you get off work.”

Jeyne breathed heavily for a moment, then she whispered, “Thank you.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Will will be ok. She will be. I’ll…I’ll think of something. Worse comes to worst, we’ll drive down tomorrow and catch her between classes.”

He heard the sound of her earring knocking against the speaker of her phone and knew she was nodding. “I’ll see you later,” she said shakily.

“Yes,” he said and the line went dead.

He took a deep breath, trying to calm his racing head and his racing heart. Then, his fingers acting almost of their own accord, he called Arya.

“Hello,” she said almost cheerfully, sounding so unlike Jeyne.

“Hey, I’m going to be out tonight,” he said.

“Oh. Ok. Something up?”

He supposed the time had come. It felt like a violation of everything he’d wanted to be, telling her about Jeyne. But he’d told her about Bella, and he knew she wouldn’t tell a soul. “I can’t leave Jeyne alone right now. She might fall off the wagon if I do. Willow’s gone and stopped responding to messages, and it looks like she’s back with her shitty ex who put her in the hospital. And I want to drive down to Maidenpool, but I can’t leave Jeyne alone. I’m worried she’ll…”

He let his voice taper away, and there was silence on the other end of the line. “Willow’s in Maidenpool?” Arya asked.

“Yeah, that’s where her uni is.”

“Right. I knew that,” she said. He heard the sound of something clicking in the background. “I can go. I don’t have much to do today anyway, so I can leave a few hours early.”

“You can just leave?” Gendry asked.

“No,” she said cheerfully, “but Sandor was drunk on the job yesterday, so he owes me and won’t report me,” she said. “Besides, I’m putting in my notice fairly soon, so what’s the worst they’ll do? Fire me? This is important and other things can wait till tomorrow. Besides…” her voice trailed away for a moment, and Gendry felt his mouth go dry. “Besides, I have experience with this sort of thing. It’d be nice to have a win. I’ll call you from the road,” she said and the line went dead.

Only twice before in his life had a day gone so slowly, and Gendry hated it. Though he could manage the utmost patience with children when they needed it, he found that he had no patience for anyone—not even himself—as he sat through his meetings, and knew that he was brusque to the point of being almost unprofessional. But he couldn’t quite bring himself to care. He checked his phone constantly, hoping for some pinging update, but he heard nothing. Arya was on the road, he was sure, and it was a good two hours to Maidenpool, and that was if she didn’t get caught in rush hour traffic. _She doesn’t speed_ , he thought grimly. He’d be going ninety miles an hour right now. _Dangerous_ , he thought, and shuddered, thinking of Mycah.

He stopped at home before going to Jeyne, feeding Watty in the pantry and then giving the rest of the cats their food. It was almost a relief that they didn’t notice his agitation. Lem stretched against his butt while he dished food into bowls per usual, and Swampy Meg mewled excitedly over her bowl. His phone buzzed and he almost dropped the food scooper as he fumbled for it, reading the text Arya had sent him almost franticly.

_Made it to Maidenpool. I’ll keep you posted._

* * *

Willow Heddle looked just like Jeyne, except with a slightly rounder face, and Arya watched her closely for a few minutes before going over to speak with her. Part of her felt like she should be nervous, that she should be second guessing herself but somehow she wasn’t. She felt oddly calm. Maybe because she knew that Gendry needed her to do this, or maybe because…. _Sansa?_ But no. No, the situations were different. And Arya was too. She was completely different. She was older now, and knew the world better, knew herself better…

Willow was sitting in the student union at a table that was strewn with receipts, checking them and then typing the numbers into her computer. She was the only one in the union. Though only a few years younger than Arya, she was visibly older than most of the other students in the room, and didn’t seem to garner their attention at all.

 _Well, here we go then,_ Arya thought, and a moment later she was sitting down next to Willow, who looked up, surprised.

“Willow?” Arya asked.

“Yeah?” Willow said, and her tone was automatically defensive.

“I’m Arya,” she said. Willow’s mouth opened in surprise.

“Did something happen to Gendry?” she asked quickly.

“No,” Arya said gently. “He’s fine. Worried, but—”

“Did he send you to talk to me?” Willow snapped, “Because he’s such a meddling, overprotective…I’m fine, all right?”

Arya didn’t say a word, thinking fast.

“You’ve not been replying to messages,” Arya said. “So naturally he worried. Jeyne’s worried as well,” she added for good measure, hoping that Willow would connect the dots so that Arya wouldn’t have to do it for her.

“Yeah, because I know what they’re going to say.” Willow was glaring at her, brown eyes hard. “And I know what you’re going to say, so I’m sorry you drove all this way, but I’m _fine.”_

“You know what I’m going to say?” Arya asked, not bothering to keep the dryness out of her voice.

“Yes,” Willow said.

“Please, enlighten me. Because I’ve been trying to pick between a few options and right now, I can’t decide.”

Willow gave her a look, like she couldn’t tell if Arya was trying to be funny. She must have seen something in Arya’s face that made her decide to respond, though, and Arya resisted smiling

“That he hit me, that he’s a horrible person, that I’m weak for going back to him, that I don’t love myself, that clearly something’s wrong with me, that you should never go back to someone who abused you, and you know what—he’s _different_ now, all right? So you can fuck off.”

Arya sat there for a moment, and she felt a smile spread across her face. It wasn’t a warm smile, or a friendly smile. That was the essence of what she’d been planning to say to Willow, at least while she’d been in the car. But now—now she saw a better route. “You done or is there more?” she asked.

“Yeah, so you can—”

“Tell you what I was really going to say,” Arya cut her off. “Because, honestly, I don’t know him, I don’t even know what he’s done beyond what Gendry has told me, and I’ll concede the point—which I don’t believe, by the way—that he’s biased and doesn’t know what he’s talking about—what with all his experience working with abusive situations and those affected by it.” Willow flinched. “You ready for what I was going to say?”

Willow gave her a look. And Arya opened her mouth and thought of Mycah. “Does he make you happy—this Clydas?” she asked and Willow looked stunned, her lips parting in surprise, her eyes widening. “Does he make you feel warm inside, like no ill in all the world can touch you? Like everything will be perfect and what does it matter what could happen in the long run, everything’s perfect and because he’s with you, nothing can hurt you?” She saw Willow swallow, and took another deep breath. She tried to summon Mycah’s blue eyes into her mind’s eye, but maybe she’d been too practiced in the past few years of trying not to think about him because that wasn’t Mycah’s blue she saw—it was Gendry’s. Gendry, her first friend in ages, his eyes glowing the way they had after she’d told him she was staying, his crooked smile when he was playing with his cats, and Arya suddenly, vividly, understood everything more clearly—and she thought she’d understood it before.

Her voice sounded breathy as she continued, but even more than before, she knew she couldn’t fail him. She couldn’t. “Because if that’s not it, is it worth Gendry calling me in the middle of the afternoon in a panic because he has to pick between coming to get you or staying with Jeyne to make sure nothing bad happens?”

Willow’s face was a mask of horror as she repeated, “Nothing bad—”

“Nothing bad,” Arya said firmly. “I don’t know this Clydas, I don’t know you very well, but I’m willing to bet you’re aware that they’re worried about you for good reasons, and that you’ve got _someone_ ,” she hardened her eyes to get the point across, “whispering in your ear that they’re being ridiculous. Is that right?”

“He’s _not_ ,” she snapped, and it was Sansa after her mother’s funeral all over again, right before Joffrey and Mycah had had their fight. Hell if she’d fail Gendry—she couldn’t fail Willow.

“Ok.”

“He—he—Why do you even care?” Willow snapped.

“Because I haven’t been able to speak to my sister in six years because of who she’s with and what that brings out in her. She’s hardly spoken to anyone in my family and it eats my brothers up. That’s why I care about _this_ ,” she waved her hands around, and watched as Willow’s eyes followed them. “Why do I care about _you?_ Because Gendry cares, and I work with wolves. And let me tell you something about wolves—they run in packs. And Gendry, over the past six months, after everything he’s done for me—he’s pack. And you are Gendry’s pack, which means, by transitive property of pack, you’re _my_ pack.” Willow clearly hadn’t been expecting that at all, and Arya went in for the kill. “And if we’re pack, I am the alpha, so you’re getting in my car.”


	14. Chapter 14

Gendry had Jeyne wrapped in a blanket and drinking tea—he hadn’t even known he’d _had_ tea until he’d found it, and had figured that Arya must have brought it home one day for some unfathomable reason—when Arya got home with Willow in tow. Relief flooded through him, and he felt warm where he’d only felt numb before.

Jeyne took one look at Willow and tears began to stream down her face. Willow hurried to her sister and buried herself into her side, mumbling words that Gendry couldn’t hear.

“They can have my bed,” Arya said in a hushed voice. “If they can wrest it from Mudge.”

Gendry gave her a smile, and nodded. “I’d sort of already told Jeyne she could sleep there,” he said quietly.

“Figured you might have,” Arya replied. “Shall we give them room, or do you want to…”

He looked over at them. He was tempted to go and give Willow a hug, to tell her he was glad she had come and convey how relieved he was that she was safe. But looking at the pair of them on the couch…it could wait until the morning.

He turned around to go into his bedroom, when he heard Jeyne calling out, “You don’t have to go,” she said.

“You two want your space, don’t you?” he asked.

Willow got to her feet again and went and gave Gendry a hug. She was shorter than Jeyne was, and she wasn’t as tight a hugger as Arya was, but she was Willow. Willow his last foster sister, his first _real_ sister. “Sorry,” she mumbled into his chest.

“Glad you’re ok,” he said.

“Here, I’ll change the sheets,” Arya said, crossing the room.

“You don’t have to,” Jeyne said. “I can sleep on the—”

“Nonsense,” Arya said seriously. “You’ve had a long and stressful day an the pair of you can sleep on that bed. Changing the sheets will be a good excuse to kick Watty and Mudge out.”

Willow snorted.

Twenty minutes later, the Heddles were curled up in Arya’s bed, and Arya was closing the door behind her as she slipped out, using her foot to prod an insistent Watty—determined to return to _his_ bed—out of the way. When she looked up from the cat, her eyes locked onto Gendry’s and he felt his stomach lurch. He took a deep breath and sagged against the door to his bedroom, and Arya crossed the living room and wrapped her arms around him, holding him so tightly that he had trouble breathing. But he didn’t care. He didn’t care. Today hadn’t been a disaster—not at all. Today had been a victory.

“Thank you,” he whispered to her, his arms coming to loop around her as well. He could feel the elastic of her bra through her t-shirt.

“Of course,” Arya said. She tilted her chin up to rest against his chest, and it was dark enough in the hallway that he couldn’t quite make out her eyes, but he was sure that they were shining. “I’m glad to have helped.”

“It’s…” he swallowed. He felt stupid saying it, but it was Arya. “It’s the first time anyone’s done something like that. Just for me.”

Arya gave him a smile, and his heart rate increased. Her arms were still around him, her breasts pressed against his chest. “Well,” she said matter-of-factly. “It’s what I do.”

 _What I do_ , he thought. What she did, when she was able. When her head wasn’t in shambles and her heart wasn’t shattered. Her heart was too full not to do things, and she…she did it for him. She cared about him. It terrified him, but also didn’t. It didn’t, because her arms were still around him, and he could feel her breath ruffling the fabric of his shirt, and even though he couldn’t see her shining eyes, he knew that they were full of something that made his mouth go dry.

And before he could stop himself, even though he knew it was a bad idea, his mouth was on hers, hushing a gasp of surprise at his movement. Her arms moved and for a heartbeat he was terrified she was about to push him away, scream at him, call him disgusting, but she didn’t. She twined them around her neck, pulled him closer to her, and her lips parted and her tongue slid into his mouth to rub against his.

Gendry made a noise in the back of his throat that sounded almost like a cat’s half-meow, but lower, and Arya’s tongue was gone and he felt her lips quirking up as she kissed him. She pulled away very slightly and peered up at him through her lashes, and Gendry’s throat went very dry. “I—” but he didn’t know what he wanted to say. Didn’t know that there were words he could say. Arya stood on the tips of her toes and kissed him again, lightly. “You,” she said simply, and Gendry caught her mouth with his again.

They stumbled into his bedroom, still connected at the mouth. He had intended to sit down next to her, to hold her close and kiss her sweetly, but she clearly had other things in mind, because the minute he was sitting on the bed next to her, she shifted, getting to her feet again, then straddling him, and—god, but she was warm, and so close, right above him.

He was hard—painfully hard, and she was right there, and as she kissed him, her hips moved against his shaft, and his heart was beating an erratic tattoo against his chest. It had been _years_ since he’d had sex, years since he’d let anyone close to him, since he’d felt like this wasn’t a great deceit. But it wasn’t—at least she knew. She knew and she didn’t care, and her breasts were pressed against his chest, and one of his hands was pulling her hair from its pony tail and the other was holding the small of her back, her t-shirt hiked up, her skin hot beneath his hand, and her hips…her hips…

He wouldn’t last long. Fuck. Fuck he’d be worse than a teenager—certainly worse than _he’d_ been as a teenager. Although maybe they weren’t going to. Maybe his mind was leaping to conclusions, and just because they were kissing and she was straddling him and rubbing herself along his dick didn’t mean that she—

She made a noise and tugged her t-shirt up and off and her breasts were there in a plain tan bra right in his face, soft, and round, and small. He looked up at her, suddenly nervous. “Arya,” he whispered, “Are…are you…are you sure?”

She looked down at him, and in the light from his bedside lamp, he saw something in her eyes, something thoughtful, and wistful, and sad, but not sad either. Then her eyes dropped down to her left hand, which was resting on his shoulder, and Gendry twisted his head to follow her gaze.

Her ring was twinkling there on her finger.

 _There it is_ , he thought sadly, bitterly. He knew what was coming next. She would bite her lip, and say she wasn’t sure—not because of him, but because of her, because of Mycah and how much everything hurt. She might cry, though she hadn’t cried in months. And he’d hold her and all this would subside, and she’d go back to the couch with the cats and sleep wrapped in a thick woolen blanket and—

Her hands were gone and Gendry forced himself not to flinch. He felt her clasp her hands for a moment down between them, then felt a slight jerking motion and looked down.

She was pulling her ring off, and it wasn’t coming easily. She probably hadn’t taken it off since she’d first put it on, but off it was coming now and she twisted, leaning a little too far to the side to put it on the bedside table next to the lamp, Gendry holding her hips firmly so she didn’t fall off the bed, off him.

She looked him dead in the eye, and he couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t hear her breath either. They were sitting there, perfectly still. “Yeah,” she said at last, “Yeah, I’m sure.”

He kissed her hard, his arms pulling her as close to her as she could come, and he felt her hands in his hair as his lips slipped from hers to find her neck. How soft her skin was. How perfect she tasted. He could feel her heart fluttering through the veins in her neck, through her chest pressed against his, and he loved the little gasps she was making as he kissed her and held her and loved her.

He twisted them, pushing her onto the bed and coming to hover over her, one hand holding him up, the other sliding along the top edge of her bra as continued to suck on her neck. Her hands left her hair and traced along his spine, and then he felt her tugging at his t-shirt and he sat up briefly to take it off and throw it somewhere across the room, Arya’s hands tracing along his stomach, his chest, running through the hair that grew there. When he looked at her again, her grey eyes were hooded and dilated, her lips chafed from his kisses, and he saw the beginnings of pink and purple at her neck from where he’d been kissing her.

Slowly, he felt her hands sink from his chest to his stomach, to run along the waistband of his pants, and without breaking eye contact at all, she unbuttoned them and found his boxers, tugging him loose and—

Gendry’s eyes rolled into the back of his head, and every thought left his mind except how fucking good it felt for her to be touching him, how fucking amazing, how it was better than anything he’d ever felt in his life, how gentle her hands were and—

He was breathing hard, so hard, because he was _not_ coming just yet. He wasn’t. It couldn’t be over, not when it had just begun. He was almost frightened to open his eyes and see the look on her face as she stroked his shaft lazily while he knelt between her legs. He clenched and unclenched his hands then, tentatively, ran them over her stomach, hoping that the feel of her skin would distract him from the heaviness of his cock, the tightness of his balls, the way his whole body seemed to tremble in time with her hands.

It didn’t really work, but it didn’t seem to make things worse, and he ran his hands up to her breasts, cupping them through her bra. She was still lying back—he couldn’t take it off, but he could pop her breasts from the soft cups of the garment and he did so and only then did he open his eyes because he couldn’t resist—couldn’t resist—

She was so beautiful. Her nipples were small, and tight, and she sighed and arched into his hand as he caressed her and her hand slowed on his dick and god she was beautiful, worrying her lip with her teeth, her eyes closed.

She was really here. She was here with him, and she wanted to be.

He fell forward, his lips on hers again, the hand not propping him up pinching lightly at a nipple. She wrapped her legs around his hips and the sensation of her blue jeans against his bared cock made his breath catch in his throat as her tongue massaged his and it was going to be too much, there was no way it wasn’t.

Then he heard a scratch at the door and they both froze, turning to look at the door. Lem was there, scratching at it, trying to get out of the room, and they both burst out laughing. “Silly cat,” he muttered getting to his feet, shoving his pants and underpants fully off as he did so then—

“Gods, but _Melly_ ,” Arya said, her voice completely horrified and Gendry saw Melly sitting on the dresser just staring at them in mild amusement. “Oh gods, get her out, get her _out_.”

Gendry scooped up the cat, who meowed in protest, as if she were being denied the highest form of entertainment. He opened the door and Lem darted out, and deposited Melly outside the door. She gave him a withering look, then trotted out into the rest of the house and he shut the door, hoping that Swampy Meg or Harwin weren’t under the bed or something.

He made to cross the room and Arya grinned at him. He paused

“What?” he asked, confused.

“You’re amazing is all,” she said, her eyes dripping along his body, resting for longer than the rest on his cock. He felt himself flushing.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she said.

She reached behind her and unhooked her bra, then undid the button of her jeans and shucked her pants off and Gendry wasn’t really aware of crossing the rest of the room, just that he was kissing her again, that her skin was hot against his, that when she wrapped her legs around him this time, he felt her cunt this time, hot and wet and oh god, oh god, he stopped kissing her and looked at the headboard and pulled his hips away from her, but Arya took that as a sign that he wanted her on top and she pushed him over and kissed her way down his chest and a moment later her lips were hovering over his cock.

“Arya,” he said, his throat constricted, “Arya, I’m not—I—I’m not going to last long.” He was blushing furiously, and Arya looked at him for just a moment, clearly thinking quickly.

“Are you clean?” she asked him calmly.

He should have thought to ask that before, he wasn’t a teenager, he knew what—“Yes,” he said quickly. “You?”

She nodded and was sliding up his body again and but—no, no if she did that he’d—

She was sinking on to him, warm and wet and god this was real, it was happening, and she was so soft, so soft, and he fell apart, gasping and groaning and coming so hard he saw stars.

When he could breathe again, when he could think, and speak, he realized exactly what had happened. “I’m sorry,” he sputtered. “I’m…It’s just…”

She was smiling though as she slid off him, and he realized—

“I wasn’t wearing a condom—I—fuck, Arya.”

“Shh, shh,” she said, and she cupped his chin as she kissed him, her body flush against his. “It’s all right. I have an IUD. So long as you’re clean, it’s fine.”

“I still—”

“Do you really think that’s the only time we’re doing that tonight?” she asked dryly and he stiffened. “I figured you were blocked up and no matter what you’d come fast, so hopefully next time you’ll last a little longer.” She kissed his cheek, then his neck and Gendry thought about her words. _Do you really think that’s the only time we’re doing that tonight?_

She wanted him. She really wanted him. She wanted him _still_ , and _again_ , and all these other things that he’d not thought to think about, but she shouldn’t.

_Don’t be hard on yourself. You’re not a bad person._

“You don’t…” he said, “Look, this doesn’t have to change anything if…I don’t know what you want. I don’t have any demands or expectations or…”

Arya hushed him again, this time with a kiss. “I don’t know when you last dated someone,” she said. “My guess is it’s been a while, just because you never talk about things and given what we spoke of…” her voice trailed away. “But things said during sex are never thought about properly. We’ll talk about it tomorrow. I promise. Because I want to talk about it, and no it doesn’t have to change anything, but I’d sort of like it to.” Gendry felt his lips part, and saw Arya’s gaze soften slightly. “But that’s not for now. For now we are just us, all right?”

Gendry nodded and rested his forehead against hers. They lay like that for a while, breathing, running their fingertips along one another’s skin. Every now and then, Gendry heard the sound of a cat jumping on something through the closed door, but he didn’t even bother worrying about what they might be doing. Instead, he let his hands drift down between Arya’s legs and find the sweet moisture between them and began to rub.

* * *

Arya woke before Gendry the next morning. The room was chilly and when she looked out the window, she saw that it had snowed again in the night. Only a light dusting, but that would be more than enough to shut down work for the day and, sure enough, when she checked her phone, she saw a note from Sandor saying that the roads were icy and the Paramount had declared a state of emergency and had insisted that no one drive. Ygritte would judge the Paramount so hard, and Arya sent her a text message detailing it, just to amuse her.

She let her phone fall back on the ground, and her eyes fell to the ring sitting on the bedside table. She traced the pale circle on her finger where it had once sat. _I should find a chain for it,_ she thought. _To wear around my neck, or something._ She couldn’t forget him—didn’t want to. But he was dead. He was gone, and she could wear his ring without being beholden to it. She could remember him, love him without being slave to his memory.

She snuggled back into the bed next to Gendry for a few minutes until she heard scratching outside the door and an insistent mewl.

She climbed out of the bed, feeling the vestigial sensation of a very large _something_ having been between her legs last night and fumbling about for her clothes when Gendry stirred and looked at her, confusion in his eyes. “I think Watty is planning an insurrection,” she said, bending down and kissing him.

Gendry snorted. “He would, the ungrateful asshole.”

Arya fed the cats, then went and took a shower. When she came out, the Heddles were sitting at the counter and Gendry was putting eggs and oatmeal on their plates. Willow was wearing one of Arya’s sweaters.

Arya got dressed, finding a scarf to wrap around her neck and hide the almost frightening looking hickies on her neck and came back into the kitchen to find a plate of food waiting for her, and Jeyne walking back and forth through the living room on her cell phone, sounding surprisingly calm as she spoke to someone at the inn about what to do with people who were stranded by the snow.

They spent the day quietly, watching movies, drifting into lazy sleep, and grinning and bearing it when Willow discovered what was under Arya’s scarf and teased the pair of them for a good forty-five minutes. In the evening, when most of the roads had been sanded and salted, Jeyne and Willow departed, with promises to keep in touch over the next few days, and as the door clicked shut behind them, Arya wrapped her arms around Gendry’s waist, pressing her face into his back and letting her hands splay across his stomach over his sweatshirt. She could still feel the muscles there, and grinned.

“Hey,” he said quietly.

“Hey,” she replied and he turned around in her arms and kissed her. It was a comparatively chaste kiss, though enough that when he pulled away, Arya wished he hadn’t.

“Last night,” he whispered, and she nodded, releasing him and taking his hand and leading him to his bedroom again. They sat down on the bed, crosslegged and facing one another, and Ravella hopped up into the bed and settled in the crook of Arya’s lap. She ran her hand over the cat as she spoke. “I know you said that last night didn’t have to change anything,” she said. “But the thing is, I don’t think it really has. Not in essence.”

Gendry looked at her, one eyebrow dipping down in mild confusion, so she continued. “I—look, I love you. I do. It’s why I came back. I didn’t want to hurt you, or to leave you behind. You make me feel things again, and that’s…well, it’s…” she sighed, thinking of how to say it best. “I didn’t think I could. I thought I was broken and I couldn’t not be anymore. And I know,” she added quickly, cutting him off before he started, “That you didn’t intend that. That you didn’t intend for me to love you. You just wanted to help me get back on my feet. And you did that. But I do love you, and the way we are together,” she waved her hand out towards the rest of the house so that he knew what she meant, “It fits, all right? It works, and it makes me happy. It makes me feel safe, and loved, and like everything’s…” She swallowed. She didn’t know what the right word was. “But yeah—I love you. And if you don’t want me…but I don’t think that’s the issue.”

“What do you think the issue is?” Gendry asked, and she couldn’t read his face, couldn’t read his tone at all.

“That you don’t let yourself have nice things.”

Gendry snorted, and he reached up and ran a hand across her cheek. “I love you,” he whispered. “And I don’t think I deserve you, but I imagine you’ll work really hard to convince me otherwise and I’m open to that. I…I still have a lot to work out.” He snorted again. “Clearly.”

“I do too,” Arya said, and her eyes drifted against her will to the bedside table. Mycah’s ring still sat there, twinkling. “But I think we do it well together, you know? Better together than alone.”

Gendry’s hand slid from her cheek to the back of her head and he leaned forward, kissing her again. She loved the taste of his tongue, the scratch of his scruff against her face, the way his hand was firm but his grip was soft. But mostly she loved the way her heart was swelling to fill her entire chest, the way she felt giddy, the way she felt alive.

She was still slightly sore from the night before, from having a cock inside her for the first time in years, but she hardly cared as she and Gendry tugged one another’s clothes off once again lips connecting to shoulders and necks and stomachs. Gendry brushed his fingers along her neck after she shed her scarf. “It looks like I tried to strangle you,” he muttered, chagrinned.

“Well…” she said, grinning. “I didn’t mind too much.”

He kissed her neck over the hickies gently, then turned his head to scope the room.

“I don’t see any,” he said.

“I’m sure at least three of them followed us in.”

“I know,” he said and got to his feet. Arya laughed quietly to herself and tucked her knees up to her chest. She liked watching him walk about the room naked. She liked looking at him naked, the way hair covered his body, the way his cock swelled out from his hips, the way his muscles rippled as he crouched down to drag Leaves from under the dresser, Sevens from under the desk, and Ravella got the hint and darted out of the room of her own accord before he shut the door on them.

When he turned back to her, she grinned at him, and brought her knees back down from her chest, spreading her legs enough for him to see her so that when he came back to the bed and stretched down over her, she could wrap her legs around his hips again and hold him close while his tongue delved into her mouth once again.

She lost herself in the feel of him, in the way the hair on his chest felt against her breasts, the taste of his tongue, the feel of his hands as they stroked her thighs, or her sides, or cupped her breasts, or her ass, or slid down between the folds of her cunt and stroked along her opening. She lost herself in her own heartbeat, thumping erratically, in her breath mixed with his, in the lurches of her stomach when he touched her. They rocked and rolled, sometimes with Gendry on top of her, sometimes with her on top of him, sometimes with each of them on their sides, legs entwined, her hand finding the soft stiffness of his cock and her ministrations matching his in tempo and intensity.

It was lazier than it had been last night. Last night had been fevered, frenzied, especially before he’d come the first time, need boiling through the pair of them, uncontainable and overpowering. When he’d filled her the second time—if you could even really count the first time—their movements had been frantic as they’d clutched at one another, gasping for air, moaning the other’s name. But his kisses were slow now, his tongue tracing her lips and his finger tracing her cunt. He dipped his head to suck at her breast, his scruff scratching her breast, and she’d hold onto his ass, massaging it, cupping his balls and shifting him onto his back.

She kissed her way down his chest and when her mouth reached his cock, when she drew him between her lips and sucked him in towards the back of her throat, she heard him sigh and felt his hand come to twine in her hair while her head bobbed up and down, her throat relaxing so that she took him in to the hilt and buried her nose in the coarse hair at the base of his shaft. He was so thick, and his skin was soft against her lips as she moved them up and down and up and down, and he kept making a sound in the back of his throat like he didn’t want to moan, but couldn’t quite stop himself. It filled her with some sort of joy, like a balloon had inflated in her chest that she was making him feel this way, that he wasn’t able to contain the way she made him feel, that they were here, together and that things were good. And when his hips began to buck up towards her mouth, his hands slid down her face to her chin and drew her off his cock and she crawled up his body again, until her lips found his again and she kissed him hard as she sank down on to him again, feeling her muscles stretch around him once again while his hands settled on her hips until they found a pace that soon had them both gasping for air and Gendry was calling out her name and his cock twitching inside her before he came, burying his face in her purple and yellow neck and holding her close until he stopped trembling.

“You’re amazing,” he breathed when he pulled out of her and she grinned, kissing his forehead, his cheek, his chin, his lips.

“I love you,” she whispered again, and he smiled and kissed her, his tongue sliding along her lips and into her mouth until she didn’t think she knew where she was anymore—just that she was here, with Gendry.

“I love you,” he whispered back to her, and he kissed her again quickly, then mimicked her motion of earlier, kissing his way down her stomach and chest until he was settled between her legs. He spread her knees as wide as he could, and ran his fingers along her slit for just a moment, circling her clit very lightly before he slid two of them inside her and his tongue connected to her clit.

“Oh fuck,” she gasped, her hips bucking into him and she felt a rush of air and knew he was laughing lightly. A moment later, his tongue was back, a little more insistent this time, and Arya let out a mewling sound that made Gendry pause.

“You sounded like Ravella.”

“Did not.”

“Think you did.”

Arya glared at him, and he grinned and he began to pump his hand into her again.

“That so?” he asked. Arya raised her eyebrows at him, propping herself up on her elbows.

“Are you trying to prove something?”

“Nah,” he said, and Arya gasped because he was sliding a third finger into her, curling it inward to stroke a spot she hadn’t thought about in a very long time.

“Gendry,” she moaned and let herself fall back again.

“Hmm?”

But she didn’t know what to say, she was too full of him, and he clearly wasn’t expecting to continue the conversation because his tongue was back on her clit, circling it again, drawing it into his lips while his hand pumped in and out of her wet and swollen flesh, and she was moaning, her eyes rolling into the back of her head, and it was building so much faster than she’d thought it would, her stomach clenching, her breath coming in shorter and shorter until with a strangled yell her cunt clenched around him and her clit throbbed between his lips and her pulse pounded in her ears, her tits, her throat—her heart pounding hard and strong.

“Better together,” she whispered to him when he reemerged from between her legs, and she kissed him, tasting traces of herself and him on his tongue.

“Hmmmm,” he hummed, and she snuggled into his chest, letting herself drift to sleep to the sound of his heart.


	15. Epilogue

“Arya, you’re going to have to come sign for her,” Gendry called, then gave the volunteer a smile. “She’s worse than a little kid sometimes.”

“Kid in a _candy store_ ,” Arya said emphatically from the middle of the room where she was sitting on the ground surrounded by puppies who were clambering all over her, tails wagging. He could see slobber dripping from her face where she’d let herself be licked endlessly and her eyes were shining with joy.

“First dog?” the volunteer asked.

“Nah,” he said, “She had one for a long time who passed away this past winter.”

The volunteer snorted. “No, I can see she’s owned one before. I’m talking about _you_ ,” she said.

“What? Oh. I have a million cats.”

“Come on, pup pup,” Arya said, picking up her puppy and carrying it over to the counter. She set her down and the puppy gave Gendry a wary look.

“She’ll get used to me?” he asked the volunteer one more time.

“Yes,” she said. “She’s just shy around men initially. I promise. She can’t get enough of Doctor Roxton when he comes in.”

Arya signed her name at the bottom of the paper, then paused, thinking.

“You settled on a name already,” Gendry said, resting a hand on the small of her back.

“Yeah,” she said. “I don’t know…I don’t think Visenya fits in the end. She’s too…blue.”

She was. It was what had first gotten Arya’s attention—this mutt with shaggy dark silvery blue hair. The puppy was whining and made to bite at Arya’s pen. “No,” she said firmly to her, pointing a finger and the puppy whimpered. Arya planted a kiss on her nose.

She chewed her lip, thinking quickly. “It needs to be a good name,” she said. “A good name for a good pup.”

The volunteer gave her a look. “What sorts of names were you thinking?”

“My first dog was named Nymeria,” Arya said conversationally, lazily scratching the puppy behind the neck while she thought. “I like this theme of badass women, you know?”

“What about Daenerys?” the volunteer suggested and Arya considered for a moment.

“No, she’s still too blue,” she said. “But…Danny, maybe. For Danny Flint?” She cocked her head, and the puppy cocked her head right back. “Yours’ll be happier ending than Danny Flint’s though, right pup pup?” She smiled and wrote the name on the slip and handed it back to the volunteer. Then she settled a collar over the puppy’s—Danny’s—neck, and clicked the leash in place. She gave the volunteer one last smile, turned to Gendry and gave him a quick peck.

He wrapped his arm around her waist as they walked out of the rescue center, pausing only as Danny paused to sniff at a plant on their way back to the car.

“Hang on,” he said. “Let’s get a picture.” He dug his phone out of his pocket and Arya knelt down and gave Danny a hug and the puppy licked at her chin. She giggled and kissed her on the nose again.

“We’re doing this every time you rescue a cat from here on out,” Arya teased, getting to her feet again.

“We are not. The others’ll get jealous,” Gendry retorted.

“We’ll stage some old ones. Though I don’t think Watty will appreciate the diet we’d have to put him on to recreate his rescue.” Gendry snorted.

“Watty’ll already be annoyed about Danny.”

“Danny can take it. She’s a fighter. I can tell.”

 _Like you_ , Gendry almost said, but he didn’t. It was too sappy. Instead, he gave Arya’s hand a squeeze, and when she looked up at him, he saw only love in her eyes.


End file.
